by Homer Hickam
Elsie didn’t like the way Malcolm looked at her. It was like she was a piece of meat. Wordlessly, she accepted his offering and, to escape him, went into her tent, one of only a couple unburned, and sat on a cot. She took a deep slug of the coffee. It was black, just the way she liked it. Opening the bag, she drew out a biscuit, which was heavier than any biscuit she’d ever held. She tried a bite of it and found it too hard. She had to dip it in her coffee to chew it at all.
Malcolm brazenly looked inside the tent. “Sorry about the hobnob,” he said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”
“What’s a hobnob?”
“Biscuit made out of oats. Took them from a horse bucket I found over yonder.”
Elsie put down the hobnob but finished the coffee. When she looked up, Malcolm was still standing there. Fearful he might come inside the tent, she put down the cup and took Albert by his leash and walked him outside.
“Where you going?” Malcolm demanded.
“Is that any of your business?” Elsie demanded right back.
He reached out to touch her, then drew back when Albert hissed at him. His expression changed to one of bitterness. “You’ve got it all, don’t you? A husband who is in the leadership of the party and a vicious alligator.”
Elsie leveled her gaze at him. “And what do you have, Malcolm, besides a tendency toward lechery?”
Malcolm waved his hand around the field. “I have these men and soon I’ll gather them and march on the mill.”
“What good will that do?”
“We’ll protest poor wages and unsafe working conditions.”
Elsie shrugged. “It’s a sock mill. You don’t have to be educated to work there so no wonder the workers get poor wages. And unsafe? It’s a mill. Lots of machines in tight quarters. How do you figure to change any of that by marching and waving signs?”
Malcolm raised his nose as if to get a whiff of Elsie’s perfidy. “Karl Marx explained all that.”
At that moment, it occurred to Elsie that it was men who caused most of the problems in the world and that included the Captain, Homer, Malcolm, Karl Marx, and even Buddy Ebsen. It made her angry, that women had not only to bear the children and raise them, but also put up with men who only saw the world through a man’s eyes. These thoughts drove her to demand, “What about women, Malcolm? What can a woman do except be a housewife, a secretary, a nurse, a teacher, or work in sweatshops like that mill? At least a man can try to be a mill foreman. He might even be a doctor or a business owner or a banker if he’s of a mind to get educated.”
Malcolm studied her. “This isn’t about women.”
“What about Mother Jones? Isn’t she a suffragette saint to you Communists?”
“I’m not a Communist. I’m a Democrat Progressive Socialist. And Mother Jones was a union organizer, not a suffragette. The unions are going to bring equality to everyone, even women.”
Elsie looked over to the field where the men had gone. They were supposed to be making signs but most of them weren’t doing much of anything. Some of them were even asleep and others were drinking. “That bunch isn’t going to bring equality to themselves, much less everyone.”
Malcolm smirked. “I suppose you could do a better job of firing them up. As if they would listen to a woman.”
“They listened to their mothers, didn’t they?” When Malcolm didn’t reply but continued to smirk, Elsie marched over to the field. “Listen to me, you men! I’m Elsie Gardner Lavender. My married name is Hickam but I’m a Lavender through and through. My family came over here in 1712 after they were run out of England and escaped to Ireland and then got run out of there, too. They turned to America and came as indentured servants, which is another way of saying they were slaves. But that didn’t matter. They worked until they could buy their freedom and then they headed west and fought the Indians and anybody else who got in their way. They took a dead land and plowed its rocky hills and, with their sweat and blood, made it grow fruit and vegetables and flow with honey. They raised their children in a place nobody else wanted. They were free!”
The men who were awake stared at Elsie, then nudged the ones who were asleep while the men who had bottles set them down. The pink, damp faces of the strikers seemed to shine in the sun as they turned in Elsie’s direction.
Elsie glanced at Malcolm who was still smirking. She struck a defiant pose. “Then men came in silk hats came and stole the land from us and made us go underground and dig out the coal and breathe its nasty dust and hack up our lungs. They put us in camps where the only place little boys can play in the summer is in a creek filled with filth where they catch diseases that make their little bodies so hot it almost burns up until they die. They kill us and then don’t understand why we say we’re not going to take it anymore, that we’re going to stand up for ourselves. That’s what the people did up where I come from, up in Mother Jones territory. We fought for our rights! And now I’m telling you damn Tar Heels to get off your lazy tails and do the same. Stand up if you’re any kind of man. Stand up beside me. Stand up and let’s march!”
The men looked at her for a few silent moments and then, as if angels were lifting them up, rose in a body and, while Malcolm watched with mouth agape, held aloft their pathetic signs and roared their willingness to march into hell as long as Elsie Lavender Hickam led the way.
11
HOMER WAS SURPRISED TO SEE HOW SMALL THE MILL WAS. He had expected a big plant with belching smokestacks. Instead, it was just a little redbrick building with a thin pipe poking through the roof with no smoke at all. Two sagging power lines, a flock of sparrows sitting on them, were stretched between the building and a leaning pole. Big rectangular windows set along two floors were uniformly gray. A chain-link fence surrounded the mill. Atop its main gate was a sign that read STROOP SOCK MILL. A smaller hand-lettered sign on a gatepost read: WE ARE HIRING.
In front of the gate, three stocky men in suits and brimmed hats stood waiting. They drew back their coats to reveal pistols on their hips. Fearlessly, Homer and Steinbeck got out of the Buick and approached them. Steinbeck introduced himself and said, “I called Mr. Stroop and he gave us permission to go inside.”
“We heard already,” one of the guards said and nodded to another, who swung open the gate.
The door of the mill opened and a dapper man dressed in a suit and vest walked out. Behind him followed two men holding shotguns. “Mr. Steinbeck,” the dapper man said.
“Mr. Stroop.” Steinbeck nodded toward Homer. “My assistant. His name is Homer.”
Stroop looked Homer over. “He’s a workingman. I can tell by the way he carries himself.”
“I’m a coal miner,” Homer said. “But today, I’m working for Mr. Steinbeck.”
“Well, come on in,” Stroop said. “Got a half shift going today.”
“Is that because of the strikers?” Steinbeck asked.
“No such thing as strikers. If a man doesn’t come to work, he is permanently dismissed.”
As they passed through the entry, Homer took a closer look at the mill owner. The coat he was wearing was worn, the elbows threadbare, and the pants shiny from too many pressings. His shoes, probably once elegant and fine, looked to have thin soles. Either he had dressed himself in his oldest clothes for the day or his mill wasn’t very prosperous.
The first room they entered was noisy, the looms clattering away, and brown dust floated in the air. “They need to put safety guards on these machines,” Homer said to Steinbeck. “Look how that woman reaches in there and plucks at the yarn. She could catch her hand real easy.”
Stroop heard him. “She has to do that or the yarn gets kinked up. We train our people to be nimble.”
“You get tired and things happen,” Homer replied. “That loom could rip off a finger or an arm so fast you’d hardly know it happened.”
“I don’t design the machines,” Stroop replied. “I just use them. My employees won’t get hurt if they’re diligent.”
“There’s no
way you’ll hire the strikers back?” Steinbeck asked.
“Hell, no! I got feelers out for other men and girls. It’s the Depression. If you haven’t noticed, people are desperate for jobs. It might take a while but I’ll get them in here.”
“It will take time to train them,” Steinbeck said.
Stroop huffed. “Better than having to supervise a bunch of union louts.”
Homer perused a stack of boxes filled with socks. “Who do you sell your socks to, Mr. Stroop?”
“Anybody who’ll buy them.”
“Looks like you have a big inventory.”
“Things are a bit slow, I’ll warrant,” Stroop admitted.
Homer took Steinbeck aside. “This mill’s about busted, strike or no strike.”
“How do you know?” Steinbeck asked. “The economics of textile mills are quite complex.”
“If you don’t sell your socks, you go broke. That’s not complex.”
“You think the union’s wasting their time with this mill?”
“I think Malcolm’s trying to make a name for himself with the party, whoever they are, and figured this was going to be an easy nut to crack. It turned out to be tougher than he thought so now he’s swinging for the fences.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I think he really means to blow this place up. Somehow, we’ve got to head that off.”
“Agreed. But how?”
Homer considered. “He thinks I’m somebody important in the party. Maybe if I play along, I can get my hands on that dynamite and get rid of it.”
“What if he catches you at it? Sounds dangerous.”
“I’m a coal miner, Mr. Steinbeck. Dangerous is what I do.”
Steinbeck squinted. “You know, Elsie’s got quite the man in you. I’m not sure why she keeps going on about that Florida hoofer.”
“It’s hard to fight a dream,” Homer answered. “And maybe harder to lose one.”
“How about you, Homer? What’s your dream?”
“I just want to live in Coalwood, mine coal, and have a family.”
“Seems simple enough.”
“With Elsie,” Homer said, “nothing is simple.”
12
ELSIE AND MALCOLM WERE IN THE FIRST LINE OF STRIKERS marching up to the gate of the Stroop Sock Mill. Most of the others were holding back. Although they’d been excited when they’d left the camp, their spirits had ebbed as they neared the mill. Their chants were listless, their signs drooping. To revive their spirits, Elsie jabbed her sign—which said STROOP IS A RATT!—at the sky and yelled, “Stay with me, men. Stay with me and we can win!”
Beside her, Albert was in his washtub atop a toy wagon, liberated from the host farmer’s yard, pulled by one of the strikers. A sign attached to the wagon read TAKE A BITE OUT OF UNFAIRNESS. Another man carried a bucket of water to keep Albert cool. “How did you get them to do that?” Malcolm asked Elsie out of the side of his mouth.
“I just asked.”
“Elsie, do you have any idea the power you have over men?”
“And do you have any idea the power you men have over all of us women? Let me tell you, the day will come when that will change.”
Before Malcolm could reply, if he had a reply, the strikers stumbled to a halt, their cries winding down to mumbled imprecations. Stroop had appeared behind the fence with his big, rough-looking bodyguards. Homer and Steinbeck were also there.
The gate opened to let Homer and the writer out. “You shouldn’t be here, Elsie,” Homer said, then noticed her sign. “There’s only one t in rat.”
“I know that. I was going to write ‘rattlesnake’ and ran out of room.”
Homer took her arm. “You’re going with me.”
She pulled away. “No, I’m not. The only reason these men came here was because of me.”
“That’s kind of true,” Malcolm admitted.
“You keep out of it, Malcolm,” Homer snapped. “This is between me and my wife.” He leaned over and spoke into Elsie’s ear. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to put me in my place?”
“No, to put me in mine.” She pushed past Homer to confront the owner. “You are a mean man, Mr. Stroop, and so are your scabs!”
“Woman, be careful!” Stroop snarled. “I respect women but when you pick up a sign and start waving it at me, you get on my wrong side!”
“All your sides are wrong!” Elsie yelled, then turned and addressed the strikers. “Listen to me! Here he is! Stroop! He’s taken away your jobs and given them to scabs. You said you weren’t going to take it.”
A voice rang out. “No, we’re not going to take it!”
“Don’t tell me. Tell him!”
A quiet, almost apologetic chant began. “Not going to take it. Not going to take it.”
“For crying out loud!” Elsie shouted. “Pick it up! No more scabs!”
The cries became a little louder. “No more scabs! No more scabs!”
“Elsie, you’re playing into Stroop’s hands,” Homer said. “Look at him grinning. He’s going to unleash his men.”
Elsie ignored her husband, threw down her sign, and cupped her mouth with both hands. “Take the mill! Take the mill!”
“Stop it, Elsie,” Homer said.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t ever tell me what to do!”
“I’m your husband. That’s my job.”
Elsie glared at Homer and Homer glared at Elsie as the strikers and Stroop and Malcolm and even the mill turned into a gray, inconsequential mist that all but ceased existing around them. “Buddy wouldn’t tell me what to do,” she said.
Homer’s eyes turned to blue ice. “Buddy isn’t here. He’s in New York dancing with other women. Lots of other women.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Maybe not, but I think you do.”
Suddenly, the mist dissolved and everything around them snapped back into focus. Stroop gave his order and his guards burst through the gate. They threw punches at the strikers and knocked them down and stomped on them. Rocks, hurled by both sides, started flying and one of them sailed in and struck Elsie on her head. “Oh,” she said in a small, surprised voice and started to fall but Homer caught her, hooked his arm into hers, and grabbed the handle of Albert’s wagon. Homer half-carried Elsie and pulled Albert through the battle until they were clear.
In a little woods nearby, Homer sat Elsie down against a tree. “Does it hurt?” he asked.
Confused, she stared at him. “Does what hurt?”
He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the wound on her head. The handkerchief came away bloody. When he showed it to her, Elsie, undaunted, struggled to rise.
“Stay down,” Homer said, pushing her back. “You got hit by a rock.”
“I don’t care,” she protested. “My men are getting the worse of it.”
Homer looked over his shoulder. The strikers had broken, their signs thrown down and trampled. The only ones left behind were either lying in the street or limping away. “They’ve been beaten,” he said. “It’s over.”
“It’s not right,” Elsie said in disbelief. “Stroop should lose but instead he’s won.” She looked up at Homer. “And you won’t help, will you? You’re on his side. You’re a . . . a capitalist.”
Homer held her close but didn’t say anything. Elsie looked over his shoulder and saw the men straggling away, some of them helping others but mostly by themselves. Stroop’s strikebreakers were walking around, laughing and tossing the signs into a heap. “What’s wrong with this world, Homer?” she whispered.
“Nothing you can fix, Elsie.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re supposed to know. You’re my husband.”
Homer didn’t say anything. He just held her tighter.
13
WHEN THEY GOT BACK TO CAMP, HOMER TOOK ELSIE AND Albert back to the tent, then helped her onto one of the cots. He washed his bloody handkerchief out and
used it to pat away the dried blood from her wound. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible,” she said. “Did you see how those men ran?”
“They were getting beat up, Elsie,” Homer said. “They’re mill workers, not professional ruffians.”
“I need to think about this.”
“Well, just relax for now. You can think later.”
Steinbeck showed up, peeking into the tent. Homer came out to talk to him. “Well, that didn’t go well,” Steinbeck said, drily.
Homer saw Malcolm arrive in his car. “John, would you look after Elsie for a while?”
“Be my pleasure. What are you going to do?”
“Get hold of that dynamite and stop this before it goes any farther.”
The camp was nearly empty except for a few weary stragglers wandering in. Malcolm was dourly contemplating them when Homer walked over. “What’s your plan to blow up the mill?”
“There’s a locked gate in the back of the mill. Simple to cut the lock and sneak inside.”
“What about Stroop’s guards?”
“That’s why I hung back, to see what they’d do. Every manjack one of them went off to get drunk. Far as they’re concerned, they did their job. The strike’s over.”
“Where’s the dynamite? I need to look at it again, make sure it’ll blow.”
“It’ll blow. Anyway, it’s already on its way. Slick and Huddie are trucking it over.”
Homer had wondered why Slick and Huddie were involved with the strikers and now, recalling the bank teller’s advice on how many sticks of dynamite it took to blow a steel safe, he thought he knew. “You really gave them your dynamite?”
“Sure I did. They not only have a truck, they volunteered.”
Homer lowered his chin and shook his head. “You know, Malcolm, my boss back in West Virginia is a fellow named Captain Laird. He’s a great man and knows a thing or two. He told me one time, ‘Never be afraid to tell a man he’s no good because how’s he going to get good if he doesn’t know he’s bad?’ Well, Malcolm, you’re bad but I’m not sure telling you is enough. I guess I need to show you. Where’s the nearest bank?”