by Ann Tatlock
I could not, however, continue to allow myself to be sweet on Danny Dysinger. His father was my uncle's enemy, and I had no business hoping for any sort of alliance, however innocent, with such a one as he. Already I had replaced him as prospect number three when Charlotte and I spun the globe. Should I pull number three from the jewelry box, I'd be honeymooning instead with Buster Keaton, at least until I could set my sights on some other boy at school. And if Danny tried to flirt with me between classes--and I was smugly certain that he would now that my hair was bobbed--I would simply have to stick up my nose and walk away.
As it turned out, I needn't have come up with any such resolve. On the first day of school (and for many days afterward) Danny Dysinger paid no attention to me at all. He seemed to have forgotten we had shared a box lunch during the fund-raiser for the Lower Street Mission. I was secretly hurt that he would forget so easily and angry that I didn't have the opportunity to rebuff his advances. He left me with no means of dignity at all. I could only stare at him from across the room, feeling on the one hand as traitorous as Juliet in love with a member of the opposing tribe, and on the other hand as undesirable as Leah, whose husband, Jacob, threw fits of disgust when he discovered he'd been tricked into marrying her.
After school that first day, I went home with Charlotte to do the globe and talk about the boys in our class. She had gained no more encouragement from Mitchell Quakenbush than I had from Danny Dysinger.
"Like Mama says," Charlotte explained in a huff, "men are fickle. One day they tell you they love you, and the next they can't even remember your name."
Not that Mitchell Quakenbush had ever told Charlotte he loved her. As far as I knew, he had never paid Charlotte any attention at all--hadn't even shared her box lunch at the fund-raiser. But our imaginations were fertile in those days, and sometimes we confused our dreams with reality.
"Well, let's spin the globe," Charlotte suggested.
We spun and found ourselves transported to the far corners of the earth with men who could do nothing less than pledge eternal devotion. My finger landed on Tahiti (or close enough) and from the jewelry box I pulled number three. For the first time I found myself honeymooning with my substitute for Danny--Buster Keaton. Charlotte sailed off to the Mediterranean with Eddie Tolan, the Olympic runner to whom she'd lately taken a fancy.
We sighed contentedly and began to rummage through the shoe box of cosmetics. We powdered our faces and darkened our eyelashes and rubbed lipstick over our lips, and suddenly, right in the middle of everything, I was struck by the overwhelming sense of the unreality of this game of make-believe in which I found myself a willing participant. I was playing the game because I had my whole future ahead of me, and I had the youth and the adolescent mind-set to believe that my life should unfold just as I desired. But I had spent a whole summer pining over Danny Dysinger only to have it come to nothing. And now I suddenly could see that dreams are dreams and life is life, and that only too often the two bear little resemblance.
The hand that held the tube of color to my lips paused in midair. "Charlotte," I said quietly, "do you think it'll ever really happen?"
My friend must have been preoccupied with thoughts of sailing the Mediterranean, for it took her a moment to respond. "What?" she finally asked, reluctant to be pulled away from her visions. "Do I think what will ever happen?"
"You know, the traveling, the excitement, the romance. Do you think it'll ever really happen?"
"It better happen," Charlotte stated firmly, "or I'm going to kill myself."
But I think that was the moment my one foot, still caught in childhood, made a definitive move over the line toward adulthood, because it was then I began to realize that life might very well turn out to be quite different from our dreams, and that happiness, too, might be something completely other than what we had always imagined it to be.
Chapter Twenty-One
Papa?"
"Hmm? Yes, Ginny?"
"What is going to happen to Uncle Jim and Mr. Atwater and all those other men in jail?"
Papa drove with his left elbow out the window. He glanced into the rearview mirror, then stretched his left arm straight out to let the driver behind us know we were turning. After a summer of such signaling, Papa's left arm was considerably darker than his right.
When we'd made the turn, Papa said, "I can't say for sure, of course, but chances are some of them will serve prison sentences."
"But why, Papa?"
"Because rioting is a criminal offence. It's against the law. What makes it worse is that a couple of police and a deputy sheriff were killed."
"But so were five mill workers--no, six! One was killed in the first riot, remember?" Papa nodded. I continued. "Will the police who killed them go to prison, too?"
"No, they won't go to prison. That's not considered murder, Ginny. The lawmen were only doing their job."
"But that's not fair, Papa."
"Well, it certainly doesn't seem fair, does it?"
We were quiet for a moment. Then I asked, "Do you think Uncle Jim is one who'll serve a prison sentence?"
"I can't say for sure," Papa repeated. "The union lawyers are working pretty hard on behalf of all the men in jail. It may be that they'll persuade Governor Borgmann to be lenient. We can hope so, anyway."
Uncle Jim had been locked up for three weeks now, and it seemed strange to have a relative behind bars. Jail was for criminals, and Jim Dubbin wasn't a criminal--no matter what the law said about rioting. Rioting hadn't been his intention. He had wanted only to make a better life for himself and for other working men. But somehow the plan had taken a turn for the worse, and Uncle Jim ended up where he didn't belong.
We all missed him, but we didn't talk about him much. It was too painful. It was almost as if by not talking about him, we could pretend he wasn't in jail, that he'd be coming home anytime now, that he'd walk through the front door with those great strides of his just as he used to.
The grown-ups visited him in jail, but Uncle Jim didn't want us children to see him there. Trying to remain optimistic, he said he'd see us when he got home. Aunt Sally always returned from these visits looking sad and wistful, but instead of talking about her husband, she'd say something like, "I wish Jimmy Jr. were here. Do you suppose he knows how much we miss him?"
It was a Saturday afternoon near the end of September, and Papa and I were on our way to Soo City. Mother still didn't approve of our visiting the shantytown but relented without too much fuss whenever Papa said I was going with him. I think she still had her bad feeling, but I didn't hear her say as much. Before I could leave the house, though, I had to have my homework done, my piano practicing finished, and my chores completed. I had had a busy morning, but I didn't mind. I read my English lesson and figured my math problems at my own desk in my own room, where--curtains drawn back and windows thrown open wide--I paused occasionally to look for angels on the sunbeams slanting in. I'd seen none, and yet I wasn't disappointed. They must be here, I thought, because life was peaceful again. The strike was over. Uncle Jim was in jail, but I tried to look at the bright side even of that. It was better than being dead. Aunt Sally, though still concerned about Uncle Jim's future, had stopped crying. The radio no longer played endlessly while we gathered anxiously about it, fanning ourselves with funeral parlor fans. Life had regained its composure, had evened out to a more easily navigable flow.
Though I still saw the dying man in my dreams, I had gotten over some of the horror by recounting the event in detail to Charlotte. She was the only one, besides Simon and my cousins, who knew that I'd seen a man shot to death. Mother, Papa, and Aunt Sally had never asked about the riot--maybe they'd been afraid to ask. If the boys ever spoke of it to them, I wasn't a part of the conversation. And yet I needed to tell someone about the shooting, so I poured the scene into the listening ear of my friend. She was sympathetic and, needless to say, more than a little envious.
"Wow, Virginia," she had said admiringly, "you've--wel
l, you've lived!"
As we made our way to the shantytown, Papa whistled against the wind, cooler now that summer had passed. As usual, he whistled Christmas tunes, and even though we were no longer at the height of the summer heat, the notes of "The First Noel" still seemed out of place against the early autumn landscape. The trees were just beginning to succumb to fall colors--here, a hint of red, there, of yellow--and the first few leaves had begun spiraling to the ground. Each evening when dusk settled in we relished the refreshing night breezes, the forerunner of a colder season. It wasn't here yet, but the world hinted at its coming.
In the backseat of the car lay six wool blankets, neatly folded. It wouldn't be long now before the folks in Soo City would need to wrap themselves up against the frigid weather. Whenever I went to the camp, I handed out as many coverings as I could. Still, as men and even entire families came and went, there always seemed to be someone else who needed a blanket before winter.
Listening to Papa whistle, I let my mind wander and found it going around in circles from the riot, to school, to Danny Dysinger, to Charlotte, and back to the riot again. I wondered what Uncle Jim was doing to pass the time behind bars, and I wondered whether Mr. Atwater was sorry he hadn't become a shoe salesman or a railroad conductor or something equally as routine and safe.
"Papa?"
The whistling stopped. "Yes, Ginny?"
"Why does Mr. Atwater keep trying to organize unions when he just gets beat up and shot and arrested?"
A little smile of amusement formed on Papa's lips. "Well, because he's doing something he believes in. I'm sure he finds a certain satisfaction in it."
"But he could get killed one of these days if he keeps getting shot at."
"There's always that possibility, I suppose."
Papa parked the car in our usual spot on the outskirts of Soo City. Before we got out, I remarked, "I don't think unions are worth getting killed over."
"It's all in how you see it, Ginny. To Mr. Atwater, it would probably be worth it. You see, it's not the unions that are so important to him, but the men who make up the unions. Mr. Atwater is making sacrifices for the people he cares about."
I considered this a moment, then replied, "Still, if you ask me, I wouldn't die on purpose for anything."
"It isn't easy, but many people do. Maybe not completely on purpose, but they take the risk. Soldiers die for their country. Martyrs die for their beliefs. Union organizers die for social justice. They allow their lives to be sacrificed for what they think is a greater cause."
We got out of the car and opened the back doors on either side. I took three of the blankets in my arms--we hadn't brought the wagon this time--while Papa grabbed the other three along with his medical bag. We walked past the "Welcome to Soo City" sign. I still hadn't decided whether that sign was blasphemous or not, but over the months as I saw people come and go, I had come to appreciate their illegal dependence upon the Soo line. If they didn't hop the trains, how would they get from here to there in search of opportunity? The soles of their shoes were too thin to carry them to all the places where those great train wheels were rolling every day.
As we sauntered through the orderly squalor of the shantytown, I thought about Papa's words. "The mill workers who died in the riot--in a way they were martyrs, weren't they?"
Papa, shifting his medical bag from one hand to the other beneath the bulky blankets, said, "Not everyone would think so, but yes, they certainly died for what they believed in."
"Then maybe that's better than dying in a plain old accident or just of old age."
"The poets might hail it as more noble, I guess. Afternoon, Mrs. Hunt, Mrs. Conley," Papa said, greeting the two women who were washing dishes together outside Mrs. Hunt's shanty. Ever since Roy Conley had settled his family into the camp a short time before, Mrs. Conley and Mrs. Hunt had become inseparable. I thought it particularly nice that Mrs. Hunt had found a friend. Now she had someone to visit with all the time.
The women greeted us, saying they were happy to see that the blanket brigade had returned. Papa asked them how their children were, and they assured him all were fine. I didn't see Lela around anywhere and was thankful for it. She and her questions had a way of making me nervous.
Papa and I walked on. "Even if it's a more noble way to die," I said, picking up the thread of our conversation, "I hope I don't ever have to be a martyr."
Papa let go a swift chuckle. "I wouldn't put that on the top of your list of worries right now," he remarked.
There were a couple of new men in the camp that Papa wanted to visit first--he'd met them earlier in the week, and one of them was suffering attacks of asthma--but before we could hunt them down, we came across Dick Mason sitting alone on a Soo City lawn chair in front of his shanty. He was reading a day-old newspaper while an unlit cigarette butt dangled listlessly from his lower lip. When he saw Papa, he folded the newspaper and waved us over. "Pull up a brick," he invited. "I've got to talk with you, Doc."
Papa put the blankets and his bag just inside the door of Mr. Mason's shanty, then upended a couple of cinder blocks for the two of us to sit on.
Dick Mason shook Papa's hand and tipped his weathered fedora at me. "Got news for you, Doc," he began. "It may mean something, or it may mean nothing at all. I don't know. But Mr. Jones has got himself a sidekick, a fellow by the name of Ernie Armstrong. The two of them have been working overtime trying to get the men to stage a hunger strike down in front of City Hall."
Papa's eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "A hunger strike?"
"One of the missions downtown has run out of money and is no longer giving out food. That was one of the places the men were dependent on for a square meal, and last week it had to shut its doors," explained Mr. Mason. He hadn't removed the cigarette butt, and it flapped between his lips as he spoke. "Of course, there's a couple of other breadlines still moving, but the men are afraid the same thing will happen there. We all know those breadlines are depending on charity, and when all you've got between you and starvation is another man's generosity, you know you're skating on thin ice. Now Jones and Armstrong are squawking about how it's the federal government's job to take care of us, and the government's not lifting a ringed pinky on our behalf. They say Hoover would just as soon let us starve as use federal funds to feed us. Which I suppose is true--I've never been a Hoover man myself, and you can be sure I'll be backing Roosevelt in the next election. Anyway, Doc, the men are hungry. And to tell you the truth, they're more scared than ever. They're scared for themselves, and they're scared for their families."
Papa sat forward with his arms on his thighs, his fingers laced between his knees. "I don't suppose the strike down at the mill did much for their morale either."
Dick Mason shook his head and spat the butt out onto the ground. I imagined it was something he'd never done at home in front of his wife before the Depression turned him into a temporary drifter. "The men are--" He started to use an expletive, but remembering my presence, he cleared his throat and started again. "The men are plenty angry about it. Some of them were on the picket line, you know." Papa nodded. "Every man in Soo City was on the side of the strikers, and they took the loss personally. Longjohn came back from that last riot, but Ross Knutsen and George Samuelson are both behind bars. Yeah, the men are pretty sore about it all. And for Jones and Armstrong, it's just given them more fuel for the fire. `See how the government treats its workers,' they say. `See where capitalism has gotten you.' "
Mr. Mason paused to fumble around in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. He didn't have a pack of them; rather, he drew out three that had already been smoked to some extent and picked out the longest one. I decided he must have picked them up off the street in town. I shivered as he lighted the tobacco with the last match in a dog-eared matchbook, imagining the dirt the man had just placed between his lips.
He continued. "If you're going to be a Red, now's the time, I guess. If I didn't know better, I'd say the time was ripe for a revolut
ion. I don't really think it'll happen, but those who want to believe in it have got good reason. Things have never been worse for the capitalist."
Papa squeezed his fingers together, then cupped his knees with the palms of his hands. "No use worrying about a Communist takeover because it's not going to happen," he stated flatly. "Anyway, that's the larger picture. What we have to be concerned about is the smaller picture, that is, what's happening right here. What do you think the chances are, Dick, that there will be a hunger strike?"
Dick Mason took the cigarette out of his mouth and scratched his forehead with his thumbnail. "I frankly think chances are good," he confessed, "judging from the atmosphere around here lately."
"Have any definite plans been made for a strike?"
Mr. Mason shrugged his shoulders while taking a long drag of the cigarette. The smoke came out while he spoke. "I'm not sure, but I don't think so. The scary thing is, where once the men weren't willing to give Jones the time of day, now they're starting to listen to him. That's what hunger and anger will do to you. Suddenly a man doesn't have the same convictions he had when he was comfortable, and the Reds know how to take advantage of that."
Mr. Mason smoked quietly while Papa rubbed the back of his neck with a handkerchief. I rocked casually on the cinder block while watching a couple of scrawny chickens strut their way across Hoover Avenue. The lack of meat on their bones was probably what kept the birds alive. They weren't worth the effort to kill, pluck, and cook. All down Hoover Avenue, the usual group of men sat in their doorways smoking. Some, like Dick Mason, read outdated newspapers to stay in touch with a world to which they no longer belonged. Other men squatted around small fires, warming their predictable lunches of canned beans. I heard a baby cry and knew it must be Caroline Everhart. From somewhere across the dusty avenues, the sound of singing reached us. The Soo City trio was at it again. They were still waiting for the Soo line to bring them back their banjo player. So far, he hadn't shown up. In the distance a train whistle blew, and I thought, Maybe there's the banjo player now. One never knew.