Clarkton (19 page)

Lowell wondered what Bill Noska thought of it. He himself was more kindly disposed than he would have been once. The single time before that he and Lois had been to the Wilsons', stopping in for a drink and twenty minutes, Lois had not reacted well to the big new frame house that Wilson had built, the overstuffed furniture put there by a Worcester interior decorator, the velvets and tapestries standing out against Oriental rugs, the wallpaper with broad vertical stripes of silver and gray, or of two tones of blue. But he himself, even at the time, was affected by a certain sympathy for Wilson's aspirations, and today at lunch he did not display any of his usual petulance with the manager. He was moved to consider the fact that the whole mighty industrial machine of America, this largest industrial machine in all the world, all history, all civilization, was almost entirely supervised by men more or less like Wilson. It was something he had not thought of in just these terms before, and he speculated upon whether that type of fancy would occur to Bill Noska.

He watched Bill Noska during lunch. The man, he surmised, was a Slav of some sort, a Pole or a Lithuanian or a Czech. More than six feet tall, broad, solid, handsome too in a way, he appeared to possess all the qualifications for a leader. Lowell could understand how people would trust him and follow him. Lowell's curiosity had a tourist's quality to it; these people had worked for him, but he had never known them, never spoken to any of them. Until lately, the word
worker
had been an abstraction to him, and like most people of his class, his relationship with the common people, in quotes, was via cab-drivers, barbers, hotel employees, ship's help—and intermittently with all those others whose purpose in life was to satisfy this or that particular demand of his. Even his association with the plant during the past five years—in comparison with the present situation—was a most casual one. Florida and Arizona had been available during the war, as were the Berkshires. He could recall no instance during his time in Clarkton when he had actually spoken to a worker, other than a word or two with an office employee. Not that he would have reacted badly to the idea of sitting down to lunch with Bill Noska; it was simply one of those things so unlikely that in the normal course of events it did not happen. Now that it had happened, he found Noska most human, clear in his ideas, and with no suggestion of that servility which Lowell had seen displayed so consistently by workers who served him and his friends. When the meal was over and Wilson had passed around the cigars, Noska lit his with no trace of self-consciousness, saying to Lowell:

“I want you to understand, Mr. Lowell, I came here because Wilson said it was a chance to get together about things. I don't like a strike any better than you do, but I can't act without the executive committee of the local. All I can do is listen.”

“That's all we expect you to do,” Lowell said.

“You're a family man, aren't you, Bill?” Wilson wanted to know. “You don't mind my calling you Bill?”

“I been called worse,” Noska smiled. “I got a family—two kids.”

“Church?”

“As much as the next guy,” Noska said.

Gelb said, “We're not just beating around the bush, Bill. You've been in strikes before. You know it's no picnic for anyone concerned.”

“I said that.”

“We want to get together and settle.”

“It sure as hell didn't look like that this morning,” Noska said.

“Maybe I was a little hasty about pushing back that picket line. Mr. Lowell thought so, and I'm inclined to agree with him now. But if we can settle this business, a picket line becomes inconsequential.”

“I'm pretty sincere about that, Noska,” Lowell added. “I want to wind this thing up as much as anyone else.”

“I can only listen. I don't make the decisions.”

“You swing some weight,” Wilson smiled. “I'm a pretty good judge of men, and I know a man who swings his weight when I see one. And I don't ask a lightweight to take on the heavyweight class. I don't pull any bluffs, Bill—I'm a pretty honest man, and I like to dig right into a thing in the good old American way. That might disqualify me for diplomacy, but I never figured a down-to-earth American made a diplomat the way these foreigners do. If you ask me, we waste too much time with this diplomatic double-talk instead of getting right in there and saying just what we mean. So here's what I mean—in plain American, there's only one outfit stands to win anything out of this strike. That's the commies.”

Noska drew on his cigar and watched the smoke. Finally, he said, “They don't run things.”

“I'm not implying that they run your union. You don't strike me as the kind of man who lets himself be pushed around by a lot of half-baked wild-hairs who ought to be sent back where they belong. I'm just saying, they're the only ones who stand to gain anything out of this.”

“I don't see that,” Noska said slowly. “Maybe they're out to get the gravy, and I guess when you come down to it, I don't like that outfit any better than you do. But I don't see it.”

“This is my first strike,” Lowell said. “Believe me, Noska, as strange as it may sound, I'm the most disinterested party here, the most objective, I think. From where I stand, the longer you remain out, the more it hurts you. I can stand it. If necessary, I can close down the plant entirely. But what do you stand to gain? Would any pay raise make up for the weeks you are out?”

“From the reds' point of view, it's something else,” Gelb put in. “I know those boys from way back. Their main interest is to grow. They want to take over, don't they? All right, strikes are meat for them. Unemployment. Bad times. To hell with the union! To hell with the workers! They're out for themselves. Any strike is their baby. I haven't been there, but I'll lay you ten to one that right at this minute they're at your union headquarters selling the
Daily Worker?
Did I call it? Am I right?”

Noska didn't answer. He held the cigar in his hand, staring at the curl of smoke that came from the long ash.

“Bringing food in. Every damn strike I've ever seen, there was food by the ton from the party. Just a poor little organization, can't keep itself alive. Did you ever think to ask where that food comes from, Noska?”

“You'd be eating caviar if it wasn't a dead giveaway,” Wilson said.

“What in God's name are they after?” Gelb said bewilderedly, “We got a pretty good land here. It has its imperfections—sure it has. But compared to Russia, it's paradise. It's a land of milk and honey, to use a Biblical phrase. If a man's not too lazy to work, there's a job for him. And, damn it all, if he is too lazy to work, there's still relief. Maybe he won't be a millionaire—how many of us are millionaires? Sure it's not all perfect. Sure the niggers and the kikes get pushed around a little. But just turn the country over to the niggers and the kikes, the way the commies would like us to, and see what kind of a break a Christian American'll get. Do you know what a commie is, Noska—he's a sick man. He's part of a disease. He's a man who hates. What do we value, the church, the home, the land we live in—wipe it out, he says. Look at Spain, where the reds killed twenty thousand Catholic priests, murdered them in cold blood. Look at Russia—do you know that during the famine in the nineteen-twenties, they murdered twenty million Russian peasants? That's the kind of a concentration camp they went to create right here. That's why a strike is their baby. There's a man in New York by the name of Jack Loman—belonged to the party himself at one time. A fine writer, a man of integrity, but taken into their net of illusions. He has stated—without any doubts attached—that every American Communist is an agent of the Soviet Government. I'd be a rich man if I had one per cent of the money Russia's poured into this country, backing that outfit. There is another man, Johnny Frank, just a little while ago one of the biggest men in their outfit, but a believer, and he couldn't see himself burning in hell for all time. He returned to the church, and he made some pretty astounding revelations when he pulled out of the party. Named the secret international agents who pull the strings in their outfit. Revealed a huge plot to get hold of the atom bomb and hand it over to the Russians, lock, stock, and barrel. They're nice little babies, all right—just pleasant little boys. That's why I say, nobody stands to win out of this but them.”

Gelb finished off with the same tone of injured bewilderment that had marked the beginning of his outburst. Lowell stared at him, but he avoided Lowell's eyes; glancing at young Norman, Lowell saw him a person captured, rapt, and all the time Gelb had spoken he had never taken his eyes off Gelb's face. The silence hung like heavy lace until Noska muttered:

“I don't vote strikes. I don't call them off.”

“We understand that. We sat down to talk,” Wilson said seriously, “and I don't think anything is lost when grown men sit down and talk things over. That's the American way.”

“A frank exchange of opinion,” Gelb said, “is the well-spring of democracy. We can still afford it; I say, God help a country that gets to a condition where it can't.”

So firm was the man's voice, so forthright, so complete was the ring of truth, the querulous note of anxiety, the high pitch of indignation and conviction, that Lowell, in spite of himself, in spite of what had gone on the day before, found himself being carried away. The very triteness of Gelb's and Wilson's homilies and cliches added to the effect, and the silent adoration of Frank Norman was like a correct and ingenious prop, added casually at the last moment, yet becoming the central factor of cohesion and effect.

“I think of this little part of New England,” Gelb continued, softly, the hard edges of him melting, a note of meditation clinging to his voice. “I think of the sufferings; the blood and sweat and tears of the generations who made this peaceful land. I think of the Pilgrims and the traditions of the Pilgrims and the banner of freedom they raised, for our children to inherit, and then I think of this dirty red scum. like a blot”—Gelb took a thick package of new bills out of his pocket and laid it on the table—“across the fair face of this free land.” Noska's eyes fixed on the bills, and then swung up, moving from face to face, hanging on each for an instant, then back and fixing on Gelb. Gelb replaced the bills in his breast pocket.

“I guess I got to go,” Noska said.

To Lowell, it suddenly became unbelievable, cheap, tawdry, apparently staged. Noska must have known. He stood up and walked out of the room. Wilson started to speak, but Gelb gripped his arm, held him a moment, and then rose and followed Noska. Lowell heard Gelb say, “I'm sorry, Bill. I should have known better. I shouldn't have done that. It was a cheap, rotten thing to do.”

17.
G
elb delivered something that was in the
way of an apology to Lowell. “Everything is simple until you get on the inside of it, Mr. Lowell. Then it becomes complex.”

“I could go along with you until you tried to bribe him,” Lowell said. “It's your work and you do it your way.”

“I didn't try to bribe him,” Gelb said matter-of-factly. “Any more than I tried to bribe Ryan. It's a tactic and no more. If you think it's a cheap one, perhaps you're right.”

“It's your job,” Lowell told him. “I'm sick to death of this strike. If you can end it tomorrow, end it.”

“But I'd like you to understand. If you can bribe a labor leader, then he's too rotten and gone to be worth it. That's a healthy young man. I want to get him to thinking. I want to get one idea clashing against another. He won't sit still.”

18.
L
owell drove to the same gin-mill where he
had drinks that morning. The snow had stopped; the clouds were breaking in a deep-purple indecision, and from one spot of blue sky, long rays of sunlight came down to salve the white hills. In the unearthly afternoon light, the landscape was both beautiful and melancholy, and it put Lowell into a pensive and introspective mood. He was a sensitive man, sensitive to beauty, to colors, to sound, to the very quality of the air, which can have so certain an effect upon some and so little effect upon others. Sometimes, in such a mood, it seemed to Lowell that he was the only human being alive in a vast and indescribable loneliness and that all of the world was a dream only he experienced. At such times, a youthful, indeed an adolescent tenderness would take hold of him, and he would experience a misery that was closer to happiness than unhappiness. He liked this feeling, and secretly prided himself upon it, indulging it whenever he could. When it was upon him, a puritanical glow would take hold of him, a high resolve that he often considered the heritage of some ancient and God-fearing New England ancestor. Nor was this asceticism disturbed by contradictions, or by the elements or happenings of life, or by what he had or had not done; quite to the contrary, it was directed toward the ennobling potential within himself, and it lived and nourished itself in that rarefied atmosphere for whatever length of time it persisted.

That was his mood now, when he drove to the gin-mill. He parked his car to one side, and then stood by it for a while, in the wonderfully clean and sweet-smelling air. Now, in this brief moment, he was able to think of Clark without regrets; there was no existence worth weeping for; everything was for a day or a moment. He felt both sad and happy as he went inside, nodded at the bartender, and called Rose Antonini from the phone booth. A tired voice, heavy with an Italian accent, with the trials, tribulations, and unregretted days of the past, answered, listened, and then said, “All right. Now you wait a minute. You wait a minute, huh? I get her.”

“This is George,” he told the girl.

“George?”

“George Lowell.”

“Oh.” That was all she said.