The land of plenty, p.32
The Land of Plenty, page 32
Johnny looked at the cops sitting comfortably in their cars or sitting under the shelter of the loading platform, the dry girls in the office, and scabs taking it easy in the factory. He could see them through the open doors of the main entrance and through all the openings from the stockroom to the loading platform. There was a full loading crew. Someone had said that Carl believed the sight of the cars being loaded and taken away would dispirit them and make them believe the factory was running full blast. He felt a moment of wonder at their childish cunning. Even he could tell that the scabs were loafing and he had already worked long enough to guess roughly from the sound which machines were being run.
Midway down the line the girls made for the few cars parked near by. The old women stayed in line. There were about fifty of them: a few grandmothers and the wives of some of the men. They came down every morning and spent the days talking of their debts and what they had to do, airing their endless grievances, confused and resentful at the sudden interruption in the way they spent their time, knowing more clearly than anyone else how far the loss of a week’s pay had already put them all behind.
Waino said a little more cheerfully, “It’s only half an hour. We can stand it.”
The man from the day shift said again, “Let’s go. It’s going to rain holy hell.”
“We’re here now, we might as well wait.”
The man from the day shift nodded sadly; he had a naturally sad face and now that he was newly worried the heavy lines around his mouth and under his eyes gave him a sort of grieving authority.
“I don’t see any sense in getting wet,” he said.
The big drops were cold. The dust of the road was now pitted where they had struck, and while Johnny watched he saw the fresh drops coming faster, breaking their holes in the rutted dust. The sky was dark above the rolls of smoke, and out at sea the steel line had closed at the horizon. Now the smoke from the stack was wavering and soon would be stretching out flat toward the town.
Someone jumped up and said passionately, “Hell, rain,” and walked down the track.
“Come on,” the man from the day shift said, “let’s go.”
Waino began talking nervously, all his eagerness marked on his red face. But the man from the day shift was saying what they were afraid of; they listened to him, and Waino knew it; he rattled on and on, seeming so young and foolish and eager in the circle of silent men that Johnny felt ashamed for him and wished that he would stop. The large drops of rain spotted his blue work shirt; the fixed grin on his face made him look embarrassed. Johnny looked away, wondering why Waino kept harping on it when nobody backed him up.
The groups were still scattered; there was still no telling how long a heavy rain would hold off. I hope it rains, he said to himself, somehow believing that if he wanted it to rain it would not. He wanted to be there when they stopped work. It ended the day when they had a chance to curse them and gloat over their terror and shame, and it drew them to the factory every day—that and the hope that something might happen, that some of the cars would break down or that one of the motorcycle cops would take a spill and break his neck. They would not give it up unless they had to. That was why Waino’s talk sounded so foolish, for he spoke as if everybody wanted to leave except him, or as if everybody else only intended to use the rain as an excuse to get away.
The man from the day shift grumbled, “It’s bad enough coming down here. It was your fight in the first place. Now you want us to get soaked.”
Waino too was nervous, and now he accused himself for shooting off his mouth before the men. “Nobody asked you to come out,” he said stupidly.
“Nobody asked me,” the sad man said. “And two weeks ago the whole night shift was down on its knees begging the day shift to come out.”
“Not me!” Waino cried furiously. “I said if they want to come out, let them come out! If they don’t let them rot. If they want to eat dirt, let them!”
“Oh, pipe down,” Dwyer said. “Pipe down.”
The man from the day shift went on stubbornly, “What quarrel was it of mine? Why should I lose my job because they fired Winters and Hagen and Sorenson and some of the rest of you?”
“And me,” Dwyer said.
“Yes,” the sad man said, looking straight at Dwyer. “Why should I lose my job because they fired you?”
The expression on Dwyer’s face did not change. “Why should you?” he asked.
Somebody said, “If you still think that, you sure as hell shouldn’t be here.”
Waino rushed in again, “Didn’t you take a cut? Or did they leave you out, maybe?”
“Yes, and I’ve already lost more than it would cost me for two months. A week, that’s twenty-one dollars I lost and that’s thirty-five cents a day for sixty days.”
Somebody called out, “You ought to have been a bookkeeper, Happy. You’re making a mistake working here.”
“Laugh!” the sad man said. “They turned off my lights yesterday. They turned off my lights and now they’re going to turn out the gas and when my wife goes down to buy anything she has to beg them for credit. She has to get down and beg for credit for another week.” He said beg with a dull revulsion, as if the word was shameful and filled him with a morbid satisfaction.
They roared at him. “For Christ’s sake! You think they give you more credit when you go on strike! What the hell you think we’re doing here! You think they give the rest of us credit because we’re on strike?”
The man from the day shift did not think it was funny. He looked at them for a moment before he said “Piss on the strike, piss on it,” and walked away toward the cars. Johnny watched him, shocked at the dead weight of despair behind his voice. The rain was beginning in earnest; he could see the groups drawing together, the men trying to decide what to do. “He must have wanted to go home,” Dwyer said, staring at the man from the day shift.
His father broke out of the picket line and came up to Dwyer. The rain began falling steadily, blowing a little with the intermittent wind from the harbor; the first large drops were beginning to drain off the roof of the factory. They were still waiting, but all up and down the line they were looking toward Hagen, waiting to make a break for home. His father stared uncomfortably at the factory, trying to guess how long it would be before the full strength of the storm hit.
“Hagen, it’s raining,” somebody complained. “Don’t you know it?”
“I can’t stop it,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
“How long is it?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“It might do them good,” Hagen said, “if they saw us here no matter how hard it was raining. It might make them think.”
“Who?”
“All of them. The scabs, MacMahon too. Even them bastards.” He nodded toward the cops.
Johnny felt a rise of pride. He thought vaguely that perhaps his father was getting over it, getting over the first bewilderment when he was only conscious of how old he felt and tried to explain how it had happened to strangers. “Here comes the wet blanket,” he called out, seeing Sorenson hurrying through the rain toward them.
“We’re going to stay, Sorenson!” his father said. “Maybe it’ll make them think.”
“Make them think we’re crazy,” Sorenson said. “Getting pneumonia. What the hell good does that do?”
“I’ll stay,” Waino said again.
“It’s up to you,” Hagen said. “I’ll do what you say. Some of you kids go find out what the rest of them want.”
But Sorenson cried, “Hell, they’ll only ask the guys that want to stay!”
“Well, go with them! Go see!”
Winters came up and motioned back toward the line. “They’re still here,” he said. “They’d have left by now if they wanted to go.”
The car loading had stopped. The loaders had drawn back from the platform and were waiting inside the stockroom.
“Let’s get under the shed,” somebody said. “Hell, they can’t keep us out here in the rain.”
“The hell they can’t.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Go ask them.”
“Let’s all go.”
All at once they had to bend against the wind. The smoke from the stack suddenly washed downward, swirled around the fireroom and swept across the tideflat close to the ground. The line broke; there was a little rush as a few more crowded into the shelter behind the cars.
“No, wait!” Winters called. He ran out, across the line, so everyone could see him. “Just a couple go! They’ll get scared if we all go!”
The wind whipped the words out of his mouth. They could not hear him beyond a few feet down the line but they saw him wave and waited to see what was going to happen. The cops were looking up suspiciously, trying to understand what they were going to do. Hagen and Winters walked across the cleared space toward the captain’s car, sometimes turning sideways under the brief hard blasts. The captain got out as they approached. Some of his men crowded around to listen. Johnny could see them talking, gesturing toward the line and then toward the factory, waving their arms and shouting to make themselves heard. Then the full force of the storm bore down. The rain blew horizontally with the level ground; the air was filled with the twigs and splinters that lifted under the wind. He could scarcely see. He was vaguely aware of the movement in the men around him; then he understood, and a moment later they were scrambling into the box cars and up on the loading platform into the stockroom.
In half a minute they were all off the tideflat. The storm rushed past. The low brush beyond the tracks bent flat, lifted, and was blotted out in another downpour. He shook himself, shivered, conscious of his wet clothes before he realized what had happened. Someone rolled shut the heavy doors to the loading platform. He could still hear the wash of rain on the roof and the irregular pull of the wind, but the great roar of the storm diminished; the wind stopped in the stockroom and the lights ceased to sway. Through one of the openings in the wall he could see one of the cars on the parking space tremble in the wind, the side curtains tearing loose and flapping like clothes on a line. A cop was wrestling with the side curtains on one of the police cars, trying to buckle it down while the coat of his uniform billowed like a sail.
The doors were being closed and the strikers were closing them. The stockroom became quiet.
The scabs had moved back through the alleys of doors, circling around hastily to get behind the police. There were about twenty cops huddled together around the time clock, dividing their attention between the strikers and their own scattered comrades still blowing around the tideflat or locked out on the loading platform. There was a group of workers closing the heavy sliding door of the main entrance, and the rest of the strikers swarmed in between the piles of doors in the first alleys of the stockroom.
The machines were still running in the main part of the factory. He heard the steady whine of the saws and the thudding of the conveyor chains.
The cops were watching, holding their guns ready to fire. Some of the men were out of sight of the police; he could see them shuttling between the piles of doors. When the scabs came up to the police they turned their guns on them nervously, not recognizing them or distinguishing between them and the strikers. “Stay where you are!” a cop cried. “You men stay where you are!” The scabs halted, collected in a still and frightened group.
One of the cops walked boldly into the group at the door, his revolver drawn, gesturing with it as he advanced. “Over here,” he said. He pushed at the men, forcing them into the first aisle of the stockroom. They moved back obediently and then the other cops took courage and moved out from the wall, pushing, waving their guns while the men edged back in terror and excitement. But some of the men were already deep in the stockroom and at the far end of the line there was a steady shuffling as the crowd wavered and some of them ducked behind the piles of doors. One of the cops walked up to the scabs and forced them into the ranks of the strikers. Gradually they were all packed against the outside wall of the first aisle. A cop came up to Johnny and pushed him into the mass, saying, “Get on back, get on back,” with a habitual and unimaginative roughness they are trained to employ, and as he fell back the man behind him asked, “What are you going to do, shoot us?” The police hurried back and forth, never getting far apart, occasionally giving their hoarse, automatic cries, “Nevuh mind about that,” “Doan git smart,” like the grunting of speechless animals, their coarse faces excited and afraid. Some of the men razzed them, asked if they were going to drive them back out in the rain. When the strikers near the time clock had been rounded up the police ranged themselves in front, guarding and menacing them with gestures and dark looks until everyone was packed in a fan-shaped mass against the wall. Then the police stopped the movement at the far end of the line.
The men became silent and motionless. The scabs worked their way to the front, edged out because the others drew away from them. Some of them tried to speak to the cops, but the cops had no time for them. In the silence Johnny heard the rain and wind again. Then he heard a sound that the police did not recognize: the motors stopping inside the main part of the factory. Some of the cops drew back and talked; one of them opened the small door that was cut in the large sliding door of the main entrance and went outside. The saws were still running and the transfer chains, but Johnny heard and recognized the gradual loss of sound, the others heard it too, and knew that their own men were moving through the plant, cutting off the motors.
The police captain entered, drenched to the skin, calling out angrily, “Where’s your leaders? You men! Where’s your leaders?”
Packed in the tight mass they passed the word along, “Where’s Hagen? Where’s Winters? Where’s Dwyer?” Presently Sorenson moved out of the crowd. Someone started to go with him but the cops pushed him back. Sorenson began talking before he reached the captain, explaining and apologizing, proud of his ability to talk and of his infinite guile; “You can’t blame us!” Johnny heard him say. “We thought you said it was all right till the rain stopped!” But the captain kept repeating, “You’ll have to get out of here. You’ll have to get out of here. I don’t want any trouble,” without paying any attention to what Sorenson said.
The motors were stopping. He could imagine the scabs running from the machines. One of the cops suddenly yelled, “Get out of there!” All the way across the stockroom two men were looking at them from one of the piles of doors. When the cop yelled they ducked out of sight. The cop, who had seen them, moved a little way in that direction, but as soon as he moved the line bulged out where he had been and when another cop ran up to drive it back the men spread out into the alley. For a moment there was confusion and shouting, and Johnny drew back in terror, expecting the police to shoot, but they were afraid—they did not know how many were in the factory and they wanted to break up the mass before they started a fight. Before, the strikers had been crammed against the very wall, packed so tightly they could scarcely breathe. Now they filled almost the entire alley. And the police had not shot when the line gave way.
The captain tried to brush Sorenson aside. “Open that door!” he yelled. No one moved. Two of the cops standing near the door leaned against it but could not push it back. Until this moment the cut-off saws had been running. Johnny could hear the high piercing swing as each panel entered the saw, mounting to a shrill scream that died out just as the next panel hit. Now he heard the funny dying groan that rose when a saw stopped while it was still in the wood. He knew what it meant. They all knew that someone had pressed the switch that stopped the motor and that the saw, the power cut, had turned over once or twice before the teeth stuck in the wood. But the cops looked around in alarm. Suddenly he realized how far off their native grounds they were, how uneasy they felt, the way he felt in the lobby of a big hotel, and suddenly saw what a lot of fear they concealed behind their loud voices and blustering air. The captain sent two men into the factory. The others tried to drive the strikers together, to attract their attention and frighten them, but the men were not afraid of them now.
He heard the dying groan of the cut-off saws and watched the two cops hurrying into the mill. The scabs were being pushed away from the strikers, forced forward as the men drew away from them and at the same time pressing ahead and trying to set themselves apart from the strikers, frantic to get on the other side of the guns of the police. But the cops could not tell the scabs from the strikers, and when they saw the scabs pressing forward they watched them more suspiciously and nervously than they watched the others. He saw it. He heard the cops who were struggling with the heavy door cry out, “Give us some help!” and saw the scabs leap forward to respond. A dozen of them pressed to the door. The two cops waved their guns to drive them back. There was a confused shouting; the door opened a few feet and the scabs in front rushed out. The other cops ran down toward the door. He heard a shot and saw the scab go down off the loading platform.
The crowd broke. The men began scattering through the stockroom. Someone turned out the lights. Even as he raced away in a panic he thought that it must have been his father who turned off the lights—no one else could have reached the switchboard so quickly. The gray light hovered near the roof of the stockroom, where the windows were larger, but down between the piles of doors and in the main part of the factory it was almost dark. There were a few more shots on the tideflat and then one somewhere in the building. As the echoes died he could hear the wind and rain again. Some of the men stopped in the stockroom, pushing the truckloads of doors to block the alleys behind them. Ahead of him, in the gloom, he saw a crowd gathering, and raced up to it. Three of the men were holding one of the cops, pinning his arms behind him. They had taken his gun away from him, unbuttoning his coat to get at it, and now his coat was bunched awkwardly under his arms. The men searched him swiftly, and he stopped struggling, looking dazed and frightened as the crowd around him grew.
