The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  Sally reported that Mrs. Pritchard arrived on their doorstep one morning and spent an hour drinking coffee and explaining the benefit program a union could bring in. “Now I want you to work on that man of yours, Mrs. Tatro. I know he’s a strong company man, but people do change. And a wife’s in a position to point out some of these advantages to her husband.”

  “Jed honey, don’t you think it makes sense?”

  “You stay out of this. You don’t know nothing about it. Neither does Mrs. Pritchard. You do what you’re good at and leave this kind of thing to me.”

  “What is it I’m good at?” she asked with a coy smile.

  “Cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids.”

  “And?”

  “Yeah, that too, darlin.”

  One day at lunch Jed read a poster on the employee bulletin board announcing that a majority had signed union cards and that an election would be held over whether or not the ATW would represent employees in negotiating a contract with management. Jed’s mouth fell open. A majority of the people he worked with had been taken in by Mrs. Pritchard’s Communist bullshit? When he walked into the lunchroom, he saw a banner draped from opposite walls. Everyone was craning their necks to read it. One side was a photo of an Arnold mill in Massachusetts that had shut down because of union demands. Across it was a huge black X. On the other side was a photo of Benson Mill with the caption “It Could Happen Here.” Jed nodded. Mr. Prince wouldn’t take this sitting down. Even if the election took place, the union wouldn’t stand a chance. All those people must have been threatened into signing cards.

  As he opened his lunch box, a note fluttered out: “Just remember I’ll love you always.” He wadded it up impatiently. She was so goddam stuck on herself, always demanding his attention. As though he didn’t have more important things to think about. Such as which people in this room had signed those blue cards. If only he knew, he personally would punch them out. Or at least try to talk some sense into their ignorant hillbilly heads, like they’d taught him at foreman school.

  In the Chevy on the way home he listened to a radio editorial from the station manager, who pointed out that a vote for the union would be a vote against the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Jed couldn’t of agreed more. He only hoped the people who’d signed those cards was listening.

  As he sat in his Naugahyde La-Z-Boy Lounger waiting for supper, he read the Newland News. “Honey,” he yelled into the kitchen, “did you know that that union that’s trying to get in over at the mill has made contributions to subversive groups like the NAACP and the Jewish Labor Defense Fund?”

  “What’s subversive, darlin?”

  He hesitated. “It ain’t good.”

  She came in and put on a record. Stopping behind him, she kneaded his shoulders as Honey Sweet wailed, “My man holds me in the palm of his hand …”

  “The only thing I can’t understand,” he said, “is who around here would fall for their Commie line.”

  She continued kneading.

  “Am I right?”

  “Well, apparently there’s some it makes sense to. Not everbody thinks the same.”

  “… he’s a king …”

  “Yeah, but they just ain’t thinking it through, is how I see it.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Am I right?”

  “Well, they could maybe think it through and still come up with a different conclusion.”

  His shoulders began to twitch under her hands.

  “… his arms keep me from harm …”

  “Not if they had all the facts, they couldn’t. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, honey, I guess you’re right.”

  He relaxed into his chair. “Damn right I am.”

  “Supper’s almost ready.”

  “Good. I’m starved.”

  “Smothered pork chops. Is that all right?”

  “Yeah. Great.”

  “You don’t sound very excited.”

  “Sure I am. I love pork chops, honey.”

  “Do you love them smothered?”

  “Especially smothered.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah, I promise.” Why did she need reassurance all the time? It was irritating having to convince her at every meal that Betty Crocker herself couldn’t of did better. Why couldn’t she just put it on the table and shut up?

  The next morning handbills swirled through the parking lot. They featured the Vulture of Communism being overcome by the American Eagle. Jed folded one up to take home to Sally. He signed a petition in the locker room that supported management. It appeared the next day as a full-page newspaper ad, signed by 93 percent of “our happy Benson workers.”

  “If 93 percent is happy,” Jed explained to Sally, “and 51 percent signed union cards, then they’s 44 percent is lying. Or else the union’s done forged signatures. See what I mean? You can’t trust nobody no more.”

  No reply. “Am I right, Sally?”

  “Right, Jed.”

  The day before the election Mr. Mackay appeared in the lunchroom with Mr. Prince and a couple of men in suits whom no one had ever seen before. The room fell silent. Mr. Mackay spoke: “As you know, tomorrow you vote on the future of your mill. Up to this point, the ATW has done us a big service by prodding us into weeding out the people among us who didn’t want to work for their living. Instead, these people sneaked around on company time spreading false rumors about those of us in the front office. They attacked us personally, and they attacked how we run your mill. They intimidated a lot of you into signing their little blue cards, with their crazed Communist rhetoric. But with that scum out in the gutter now where they belong …”

  Up to this point Jed had been listening in a state of polite boredom. Mackay wasn’t blessed with the gift of firing people up with his words. He hadn’t even quoted from the Bible yet. But as words like “scum” and “gutter” appeared, as Mackay’s face began to turn red, as he began stabbing the air with his index finger, everyone sat up straighter and listened.

  “… and it’s up to each of you out there, my friends, to decide whether the interests of our Benson Mill family are best represented by men like Mr. Prince here, who’ve known you and your kin all your lives, who’ve helped you through hard times, who’ve cared for your concerns as though you were his own cousins (as some of you are). Or whether our interests are best represented by a bunch of Communist troublemakers from up North who want to use their destruction of your mill as a stepping-stone in their destruction of the entire Free World.”

  One of the unknown suited men, looking agitated, stepped forward and whispered something to Mackay. Mackay, face red and hand raised, pushed him away. The suited men each took one of Mackay’s arms and ushered him out, Mr. Prince following. People returned to their lunches, disappointed. Jed reflected that it was like high school—necking but not coming. “Who were the guys in the suits?” he asked Hank.

  “Don’t know. Heard someone say the home office sent them down. Public relations.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  That evening as Jed walked into the parking lot, what looked like a pep rally was in progress. People from both the outgoing and incoming shifts crowded around a flatbed truck on which stood Mrs. Prichard, Betty, some men he didn’t know—and Raymond, who was shouting into a microphone: “This here place was started up by local Newland people with their own money. The wages was a fortune to people who’d been starving on dirt farms in the hills. Old man Prince really did know and care about our parents and grandparents. But now the place is owned by Arnold Fiber Corporation. They got them forty-five other mills. The profits get divided up by banks on Wall Street. These gin-soaked, jet-lagged capitalists fly in here from New York City and make decisions on the basis of what will make them the most money. Then they fly home to their penthouses on Park Avenue.

  “But we run those machines, people. Day in and day out we stand over them and sweat and try
to meet quotas that are too high, under conditions people wouldn’t keep their coon dogs in. We don’t have old man Prince to look out for us anymore. Each of us by ourself, up against a company with 35,000 workers and 875 million dollars in sales, is pretty pathetic. But if we all stand together, they’ll have to listen to us. It’s hard times, folks. The old ways is dead, and the new ways is yet to come. We got here a corpse giving birth to a half-formed fetus.”

  Police sirens wailed. Some men ran toward trucks and cars. A couple on the flatbed truck grabbed guitars. Raymond moved away from the microphone, and they began singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” The crowd picked it up.

  Jed stood on the loading platform in a state of shock, trying to digest the reality that his own brother, his former Sunday School teacher, and a girl he had slept with in high school, his best friend’s wife, were all Commie trash for the ATW. There was no longer any way he could make excuses or ignore evidence. He knew what he had to do now. He squared his shoulders. His blue eyes glinted. He would devote his life to getting rid of the scum that was trying to destroy the mill and the American way of life, whoever they might be.

  Highway patrol cruisers raced up the access road. But a chaotic jam of pickups and cars had blocked off the entrance to the parking lot. The flatbed truck pulled away, as the people on it jumped off and were lost in the crowd.

  The morning of the election old Mr. Prince arrived on the shop floor in his shirt-sleeves, his son and Mr. Mackay following in his wake like dinghies behind an ocean liner. As they passed through the roving room, Jed and Mr. Meaker fell in line. The older workers smiled and chatted with old Mr. Prince as he came up. The younger ones watched the living legend with curiosity. At one point he rolled up his shirtsleeves, got down on his knees, and tinkered with a wrench on some gears.

  Mr. Meaker said to Jed in a low voice, “Used to be able to fix ever machine in the place himself.”

  Eventually he stood up, brushed himself off, handed the wrench back to the operator, and muttered, “Infernal newfangled machines.”

  When they arrived at Raymond’s machines, old Mr. Prince said, “Now what’s this foolishness I hear, son, about you being mixed up with these Reds from up North.”

  “You mean the ATW? Yes sir, I’m involved with them.”

  “Why, I just don’t understand that, Raymond. Your daddy ought to take you out back to the woodshed.” The others laughed politely. Raymond stared at him. “Why, I remember you in diapers, boy. The day your daddy paid off the mortgage on your house, I came over and sat on the back porch and drank a glass of iced tea with him. And you were crawling around in the grass with your diapers about to fall off.” He laughed heartily.

  “Yes sir,” Raymond said. Old Mr. Prince looked at him, his bushy white eyebrows twitching. After a long silence, Raymond said, “You always treated our family real good, Mr. Prince.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, son. I’ve tried to treat my people good. I think of them almost as family.”

  “Newland owes you a big debt of gratitude, sir.”

  A puzzled frown from old Mr. Prince. Another long silence.

  “But things are changed, sir.”

  “They sure have, son. We started out with a little biddy shed in a cow pasture, and twenty-five employees!”

  “Yes sir, but it ain’t like that no more.”

  Jed stood listening to the conversation that followed, but couldn’t take it in. “… movement of capital … concentration of corporate power …” To him there was Mackay, who was God; Mr. Prince, Junior, who was well-meaning but a little spineless; Raymond and Hank and Betty, who were misled by the Commies; Mrs. Pritchard, who was a ball-breaker and deserved everything bad that could ever happen to her. “Power elite.” What did that mean?

  All Jed knew for sure was that he resented it when old Mr. Prince said, “You’re a bright boy, Raymond. Always have been. You’ll go far in this world.” He, Jed, was the one loyal to the mill. Raymond was out to destroy it. Probably it was like the prodigal son story. But that story had always bothered him. Just didn’t seem fair.

  “Where’s my jacket at?” asked old Mr. Prince, unrolling his shirt-sleeves and looking around. “I’m getting out of here.”

  He called to the room at large, “Listen, friends, yall have you your union, hear? Yall gon need it. You’re gon need something. God help us all.” He stalked out.

  Jed watched him in disbelief. The old guy had gone off his rocker. That sometimes happened with old people.

  Chapter Five

  Sally

  Sally lay in bed propped on pillows, watching on TV as Ingrid Bergman reclined next to Cary Grant in an elegant flat in London, England. It was crammed with flowers he’d just brought her. “My darling,” Ingrid murmured, drawing Cary’s mouth toward hers, a hand on each side of his head.

  Sally sighed. If only Jed would sometimes think to bring her flowers … She knew she mustn’t cry because her mascara would run. She’d already noticed hints of crow’s feet when she smiled and had decided to stop smiling. Also, she’d made up her eyes different tonight—in a way Glamour magazine promised would draw attention away from the wrinkles. She didn’t know if it was successful because Jed still wasn’t home, and here it was eleven o’clock at night. Running through her mind was the Honey Sweet song she’d heard on the radio while fixing the supper that was now ice cold: “She’s out there, too, and she’s a whole lot better looking than you …”

  Usually he called if he was working late. Still and all, he’d been running around like a crazy person ever since the strike started. She’d never seen him in such a good mood. Probably he just forgot to call.

  What if there was someone else? In high school he’d been mixed up with that horrible Betty French. She worked at the mill, too, or used to. A few times he suggested asking her and Hank to dinner, but she refused to have that girl in her home. Jed was late lots …

  She glanced down at her white nightgown and peignoir set, bought for their honeymoon trip to Blowing Rock. She hadn’t known then that it would be like this—him gone most of the time, and her here alone with no one to talk to except two babies. When Joey was an infant, she started going once a week to a bowling league. She left Joey with a sitter in the bar at the alley. She couldn’t bowl worth anything, but it was fun to sit around in her orange Ben’s Body Shop and Salvage shirt, eating jelly doughnuts and chatting with girls she knew from high school. But it turned out a girl on her team was married to a man who worked for Jed. He said to Jed, “I hear you don’t like liver neither.” Jed asked her not to go anymore because it would undermine him on the job to have her gossiping about him with an employee’s wife. “A wife should be absolutely loyal to her husband,” he told her. Anyhow, he felt like that she ought to be with a better type of girl, with him about to be foreman and all.

  All her close friends were gone. Melissa was at State. Kim was in Atlanta taking a business course. It was a real switch from being Most Popular to being nothing. All the things she learned in school and in Ingenue—how to set a nice table and organize successful parties and be a good hostess—she never had a chance to use anymore. Sometimes she asked Jed if he didn’t want to invite some friends from work to dinner on the weekend. He said except for Hank and Betty he didn’t have friends there, he had workers, and he couldn’t socialize with them because it would undermine his authority. Besides, he saw them all week. On weekends he just wanted to be with her and the kids. “A husband and wife don’t need no outside friends. They should be each other’s best friends.” And he was her best friend. But still she sometimes felt lonely. And when she did, she felt guilty for being disloyal. She raised her eyes to the Norman Rockwell picture over her dresser of a smiling mother standing over two sleeping children. After all, she did have her babies to keep her company.

  What would she do if Jed had him another girl? What could she do with two babies, except swallow her pride and put up with it? She couldn’t go home. Her daddy had been so unpleasant about t
he marriage in the first place. She didn’t know what his plans for her had been, but she’d messed them up.

  “Daddy, what exactly do you have against Jed?” she’d asked once.

  He blushed and muttered, “Nothing. Jed’s a fine boy. But he chews gum with his mouth open.”

  She’d suggested to Jed to chew with his mouth closed, which he’d been doing ever since, but it didn’t seem to help much.

  Jed said once, “You know, Sally, I don’t think your daddy much likes me.”

  She’d said, “Jed honey, that’s just plain silly. He’s training you for foreman, isn’t he?” But secretly she thought he was probably right. Not long after they moved into this house, her mother and father came down for Sunday dinner. They looked around the house.

  “Well?” demanded Sally with a smile.

  “It’s very nice, dear,” said her mother in a quiet voice that suggested it wasn’t very nice.

  She saw them carefully avoiding looking at Jed as he chewed with his mouth open, his forearms resting on the table edge. Jed was nervous and laughed loudly at anything her father said, whether it was funny or not.

  “It’s sure been great having you here, Mother and Dad. You’re our first guests,” Jed said as they were leaving. They looked at him, then smiled politely.

  “It’s nice having you in the family, Jed,” her mother said, her smile strained.

  Her father called soon after to tell her he’d given her some mill stock, but that she couldn’t sell it or collect the dividends without his permission until he died. He added that she could have his permission if she wanted to spend it on some project of her own, like going back to school.

  “How could I go back to school, Daddy? I’m about to have me a baby.”

  “Hire a babysitter. Or I’m sure your mother and Mrs. Tatro would help out.”

  “I don’t think Jed would like that, Daddy. He thinks a mother should be with her baby.”

  “Fine. Good-bye.” He hung up. Just like that. How could she finish school when Jed hadn’t? He’d given up college for her, so she would for him, too.