Daniel turned to Jack Haney. “What’s the legal position?”
“Not good,” the young lawyer said. “As the law now reads, the UMW is liable for any damages that result. Even if they succeed in forcing unionization of all the mines, they’re still liable for a lot of money. It may take years for the courts to assess the penalties, but when they do, it can have a genuine damaging effect on the UMW financial structure.”
“What about an NLRB election?”
“UMW doesn’t want it. They haven’t the local membership and they know they’ll lose.”
“What about direct negotiation?”
“Completely broken down. Neither side trusts the other.”
“Any ideas on a possible compromise that would get them together?”
There was silence for a moment. Then Junior spoke. “I have one. But I don’t know enough as to whether it’s practical.”
“Let’s hear it, then, son.”
“UMW has brought in at least five hundred men, and they’re not paying their own way. It’s costing UMW at least twenty-five hundred a day to keep them. I think the mine owners would go for union-scale wages if the welfare tonnage payments could be cut.”
“Lewis wouldn’t go for that. It would prejudice every other deal he’s made.”
“On the surface, the forty cents a ton wouldn’t have to be changed. Supposing they paid ten cents a ton as mined and accepted a payment plan for the balance based on audited profits at the end of each year. If there aren’t enough profits in the kitty, just carry it over to the next year. Meanwhile, the union shows the total forty cents a ton due to the welfare fund, with the unpaid portion as a receivable. Over a three-year period, based on present production of these mines, even if the union never collected the balance, it would come out cheaper than maintaining these men here for another sixty days as well as the liabilities that could result from the present situation.”
Daniel looked at his son. He nodded slowly. He didn’t show the pride that he felt. There might be flaws in the plan, but it was a step in the right direction. It was a face-saving compromise for both sides. But more than that. It was his son who had thought of it. No one else. His son. He looked around the table. “What do you think?” he asked of the others.
Moses answered for all of them. “It’s a good idea. It just might work. But you’d have to sell it to Lewis first.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Not much. A few days at the most. Neal and Leif are ready to blow the lid off.”
“Any chance of slowing them down?”
Moses shook his head. “None.”
Daniel poured himself another drink. He gulped it down. “If it does blow, is there any way in which we can support and justify the UMW position? After all, that is what we were hired to do.”
Moses looked around at the others. Again he spoke for them. “I don’t see how we could. Even with both sides wrong, we can’t say that makes one side right.”
Daniel was weary. “If we can’t do that, we lose Lewis and the UMW. Then we’re practically back where we started. We lose their payments and we’re broke again.”
“We don’t have to do anything, Father,” Junior said. “All we have to do is take our time getting the report ready. By the time we get it into Lewis’ hands, there will be nothing that can be done. Meanwhile, we’ve done what we’re supposed to do.”
“On the surface, yes,” Daniel said. “But we all know better. We’re not being honest.”
“Nobody’s asking us to be honest, Father.”
Daniel looked at his son without speaking.
“The way I see it right now, it’s a question of survival. Maybe the next time we could afford to be honest. If we ever expect to be anything at all, we have to be around to do it.”
Daniel shook his head. “That’s not the way I do it. I’m going up to Washington tomorrow to see Lewis.”
“Why, Father? Why don’t you just let us finish our report and then take it up there in the usual manner? You don’t have to charge up there like a knight on a white horse. What do you hope to accomplish?”
“Once this starts, a lot of people are going to be hurt. On both sides. It doesn’t matter. Maybe we can prevent that.”
“It’s not our war, Father,” Junior said. “All your life you’ve been fighting other people’s wars, and where did it get you?”
“I’m sorry, son,” Daniel said. “But your idea is a good one. I’m sure that when Lewis hears what is happening down here, he’ll do something about it.”
Junior met his father’s eyes. “What makes you think he doesn’t know? This has been the pattern of every UMW drive since ’44. Meadow Creek mines in Sparta, Tennessee, 1948. Dynamite, violence, terror. The same tactics in Hopkins County, Kentucky, against the West Kentucky Coal Company in 1949. I’ve got a list as long as your arm. John L. Lewis is the United Mine Workers, and he will be until the day he retires or dies. And just because he delegates the dirty work to Tony Boyle and his other assistants, do you think he doesn’t know exactly what is happening?”
“You might be right, but I still have to do it.”
“No, Father. You’re not being fair. To yourself or the men who stuck with you all these years, sacrificing themselves and their families and their careers in pursuit of an ideal that simply doesn’t work in our society. You recognized that yourself when you made your proposition to Boyle and Hoffa, when you took that money from our friend in Florida. You yourself made the deal. You can’t walk away from it now.”
Daniel’s voice was gentle. “It’s easy for you to speak, son. And maybe you’re right. It’s not our war. But I’ve been there. In the midst of violence, with the hurt and the dead lying around me. I can’t let it happen as long as there is a chance I can prevent it.”
They were silent. Daniel looked around the table. “That was personal,” he said. “We still have to do the job we’re supposed to do. After this is all over, we’re going to have to supply the UMW with the justification they’ll feel they needed to do all this.” He rose to his feet. “Cancel my appointment to go out tomorrow. Tell them I was called back on an emergency.” He turned to his son. “Do you think you can drive me back to the airport?”
The sleet had stopped, but the road was slippery. For a long while they were both silent, until the car was near the airport; then Daniel turned to his son.
“You made me very proud, son.”
“I thought you were angry with me, Father. I don’t want that to happen. Ever. I want to please you. Even if we don’t agree.”
“I wasn’t angry. What you said was true. But I’m old-fashioned, I guess. I remember the way it used to be. The dreams we had when I was young. But you’re right. It’s another world.”
“It’s the same world, Father. It’s just that there are different ways of doing things.”
“When this job is finished, I want you to go back to college,” Daniel said.
“Do you think it’s necessary, Father? I can do a lot to help you.”
“You said it was a different world, Junior. You’re going to have to know a lot more about it than I did.” He reached for a cigar, then put it back in his pocket. “No point in lighting this. They’ll only make me throw it away when I get on the plane.”
Junior laughed as they turned into the airport road. “How’s Margaret?”
“She’s fine.”
“She happy about the baby?”
“I think so.” Daniel glanced across the seat at him. “Are you?”
Junior nodded. “If you are.”
“I am. Margaret’s a good girl.”
“She’s young, Father.”
Daniel smiled. “I guess she is. But I’m still a mountain man at heart. We pick ’em young.”
Junior was silent.
“You don’t approve?”
“You’re fifty-six, Father. It isn’t as if you didn’t have girls. All my life I’ve seen you with them. I just didn’t understand why, that’s all.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe it was because she reminded me of the girls I knew when I was young. Girls who grew up before their years. Girls who were used to taking care of their families.”
Again Junior was silent.
“Or maybe it was because I loved her, son.”
Junior turned to look at him as he stopped the car in front of the terminal building. “That’s the best reason of all, Father. You don’t need any more than that.”
Daniel got out of the car. He leaned back into it. “You know, son, that I love you too.”
Junior’s eyes were moist. “And I love you, Father.”
Chapter 7
He turned over in the bed and opened his eyes. Margaret was watching him. He smiled, leaning across the pillow, and kissed her.
“You were dreaming last night.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You were crying in your sleep,” she said. “Are you unhappy?”
He shook his head. He swung his feet off the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“All right. I think the baby moved.”
He turned, looking back at her. “You should have wakened me.”
“I wasn’t sure. It’s not five months yet.”
“It could be possible,” he said. “Especially if it’s a boy.”
“Is that what you want?”
He nodded and rose to his feet. “Yes.”
“But you have one son already,” she said. “Are you unhappy with him?”
“No. It’s just that…” He thought for a moment. “Junior is only one side of me. The practical side. He’s very good, and in time he’ll be better than I am in what he does.”
“Then what is it?”
“I would like a son who feels as I feel. Who dreams the way I used to when I was a boy, who senses the beauty in people and things around him, for whom living doesn’t have to be a series of logical explanations.”
“Couldn’t a girl feel like that?”
He smiled. “I suppose so. But it will be a boy.”
“Will you be unhappy if it is a girl?”
“No.”
She was silent for a moment. “It will be a boy.” She got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. “My stomach isn’t very big, but my breasts are.”
He smiled. “Beautiful.”
“You like big breasts?”
He laughed. “I like your breasts.”
She reached for a robe. “I’ll go downstairs and get breakfast started.”
“Mamie will do it.”
“I like to do breakfast for you. She does everything else.”
He walked over and put his arms around her. “Not everything.”
“I hope not,” she said, kissing his cheek.
He slipped his hands inside her robe, cupping her breasts. They were strong and heavy in his fingers; he felt her nipples hardening and the corresponding surge in his loins. “Come back to bed.”
She felt herself flowing toward him. “You’ll be late for work.”
He pulled the robe down from her shoulders, exposing the milky whiteness of her breasts. He lowered his head to them, his tongue licking at the circle of her flushed aureole. “Not if you let Mamie get the breakfast.”
Her hand found his ready strength as they moved back to the bed. They sank back on the bed, her legs climbing around his waist as she guided him into her. “Daniel,” she whispered, her eyes half closed. “It’s so good. So good. So good.”
***
Only Junior was at the table when she came into the kitchen. “Good morning, Maggie Mother,” he said, smiling.
“Morning, D.J.,” she said, smiling back as she went to the stove and helped herself to a cup of coffee. She came back to the table and sat down. “Your father gone to work?”
He nodded. “He’s dropping Mamie off at the market.”
She sipped at her coffee. “You’re going back to school on Monday?”
He laughed. “If you two lovebirds can be trusted to manage alone.”
“D.J.,” she said in protest. She had begun calling him that after they met. Short for Daniel Junior, it sounded better to her than Junior alone. He retaliated by calling her Maggie Mother, but there was a genuine liking between them, a respect for each other’s love of the man that bound them together. “He didn’t sleep well last night.”
D.J. looked at her.
“Something’s worrying him,” she said. “Ever since last week, he’s taken to wearing a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket.”
“He say anything to you?”
She shook her head. “No. If I ask, he says he’s always done that.”
“That’s true. I remember seeing that ever since I was a kid.”
“What’s going on, D.J.? I’m not a child, no matter what he thinks. I’m his wife.”
“Father doesn’t confide in me either.” He thought for a moment. “He’s made a lot of enemies coming out in support of the UMW after the riots and trouble in Jellico a couple of months ago.”
“Do you think they would threaten him?”
D.J. shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so. That’s the kind of war he’s been in all his life.”
“What could it be, then?”
D.J. looked at her. “Now you’ve got me worried.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said. The tears came to her eyes. “I worship him. You know I do. He’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”
He spoke awkwardly. “Maybe it’s nothing. He’s always carried a gun. Maybe we’re creating something that doesn’t exist.”
She was crying now. Softly. Quietly. “I want to help him. I want to talk to him. But I don’t know how. He knows so much more than I do. I don’t know what to say.”
He reached across the table and patted her hand gently. “You just relax, Maggie Mother. Getting yourself all upset isn’t going to do the baby any good.”
“You’re just like your father,” she sniffed, the beginnings of a smile tugging at her lips. “That’s just what he would say.”
“Maybe that is what he would say,” D.J. admitted. “But I’m afraid I’m not just like him, though I wish I were.”
***
Daniel parked the car in the alley behind the warehouse, walked up the rickety back stairs and knocked on the iron fire door. Three times quickly, then one knock.
The door opened quickly. A heavyset man stood there looking at him. “Mr. Huggins?”
Daniel nodded.
“This way.”
Daniel followed the man through the long empty warehouse, its storage bins gathering nothing but dust, then up another staircase at the far side of the building. He went through another steel door and now they were in an office. At a long table were a number of men and women sorting slips of paper. They didn’t look up as the two men walked past them into another room. Here too was a long table around which were gathered men and women. Only at this table they weren’t sorting slips of paper, they were counting money. Bills and coins, the coins set in a machine that rolled them into neat, banklike stacks. They were ignored as they continued through into the next room.
Lansky was seated behind a desk in the barely furnished white-walled room. There were several nondescript chairs and couches in the room. The other two men in the room were the bodyguards Daniel had met when he visited Lansky in Florida. At a gesture from Lansky, they left the room, leaving him alone with Daniel. “Pull up a chair,” Lansky said.
Daniel sat down in front of the desk. He didn’t speak.
“You’ve done a good job,” Lansky said. “I think this is the first time union members ever got their fair share of insurance and pension-fund benefits. They’re so used to getting screwed by their officials I wonder if they really understand what you’re doing for them.”
Daniel remained silent.
“We haven’t done too badly either,” Lansky said. “Though some of the insurance companies complain to me that you drive too hard a bargain.”
“Let them bitch,” Da
niel said. “There’s enough there so that nobody has to steal.”
Lansky looked at him; he seemed puzzled. “You’re a strange man, Big Dan. As far as I can see, there’s been nothing in it for you except hard work. Your loan repayments are made on schedule, the commissions go into the union funds, you draw nothing down except your regular salary, your expense account is minimal. Where’s your payoff?”
Daniel smiled. Lansky evidently had checked everything. “Money isn’t everything. I’m an idealist.”
Lansky laughed. “Ideals, shmideals. Everybody likes money.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t. I only said it wasn’t everything. You have all the money you need, Mr. Lansky. Why do you keep working?”
Lansky looked at him thoughtfully. He didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you retire and just enjoy the rest of your life?”
“It’s not that easy,” Lansky said. “I have obligations.”
“Money can pay them off. It has to be more than that. There is one thing you don’t want to give up.”
“What do you think that is?” Lansky asked.
“Power,” Daniel said simply.
Lansky stared at him for a moment. “And that is what you want?”
“Yes. But I won’t pay for it at the expense of the people I’m supposed to represent.”
“Then how do you expect to get it?”
“Simply. I make deals with the devils.”
“Isn’t that betraying your trust?”
“No. The way I see it, I minimize their capacity for evil. Because of what I did the last six months, more than six hundred thousand union members are getting twenty-percent greater benefit from their insurance and pension funds. And if I hadn’t kept pressing, the UMW would never be opening those ten hospitals in Virginia and Kentucky next June.”
“But isn’t that helping to perpetuate the devils in power?”
“I’m not a policeman, Mr. Lansky. I didn’t elect them to their positions. It’s up to the union members themselves to decide who they want to represent them.” Daniel took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He didn’t light it. He looked at it thoughtfully. “I’ve spent my life in the labor movement, Mr. Lansky. I’ve seen all the injustices. On both sides. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t improve it from outside. The only way to improve the system is to work within it.”
Memories of Another Day Page 40