Homeland and Other Stories (23 page)

Friday of that same week I was out on my front porch thinking about a cold beer, just thinking, though, because of no cash, and here come an Ellington car. They slowed way, way down when they went by, then on up Church Street going about fifteen and then they come back. It was Vonda in there. She nodded her head at my house and the guy put something down on paper. They made a damn picture show out of it.

Oh, I was furious. I have been living in that house almost the whole time I worked for Ellington and it's all the home my kids ever had. It's a real good house. It's yellow. I have a big front porch where you can see just about everything, all of Bolton, and a railing so the kids won't fall over in the gulch, and a big yard. I keep it up nice, and my brother Manny being right next door helps out. I have this mother duck with her babies all lined up that the kids bought me at Fangham's for Mother's Day, and I planted marigolds in a circle around them. No way on this earth was I turning my house over to a scab.

The first thing I did was march over to Manny's house and knock on the door and walk in. “Manny,” I say to him, “I don't want you mowing my yard anymore unless you feel like doing a favor for Miss Vonda.” Manny is just pulling the pop top off a Coke and his mouth goes open at the same time; he just stares.

“Oh, no,” he says.

“Oh, yes.”

I went back over to my yard and Manny come hopping out putting on his shoes, to see what I'm going to do, I guess. He's my little brother but Mama always says “
Madre Santa
, Manuel, keep an eye on Vicki!” Well, what I was going to do was my own damn business. I pulled up the ducks, they have those metal things that poke in the ground, and then I pulled up the marigolds and threw them out on the sidewalk. If I had to get the neighbor kids to help make my house the ugliest one, I was ready to do it.

Well. The next morning I was standing in the kitchen drinking coffee, and Manny come through the door with this funny look on his face and says, “The tooth fairy has been to see you.”

What in the world. I ran outside and there was
pink
petunias planted right in the circle where I already pulled up the marigolds. To think Vonda could sneak into my yard like a common thief and do a thing like that.

“Get the kids,” I said. I went out and started pulling out petunias. I hate pink. And I hate how they smelled, they had these sticky roots. Manny woke up the kids and they come out and helped.

“This is fun, Mom,” Tony said. He wiped his cheek and a line of dirt ran across like a scar. They were in their pajamas.

“Son, we're doing it for the union,” I said. We threw them out on the sidewalk with the marigolds, to dry up and die.

After that I was scared to look out the window in the morning. God knows what Vonda might put in my yard, more flowers or one of those ugly pink flamingos they sell at Fangham's yard and garden department. I wouldn't put nothing past Vonda.

 

Whatever happened, we thought when the strike was over we would have our jobs. You could put up with high water and heck, thinking of that. It's like having a baby, you just grit your teeth and keep your eyes on the prize. But then Ellington started sending out termination notices saying, You will have no job to come back to whatsoever. They would fire you for any excuse, mainly strike-related misconduct, which means nothing, you looked cross-eyed at a policeman or whatever. People got scared.

The national office of the union was no help; they said, To hell with it, boys, take the pay cut and go on back. I had a fit at the union meeting. I told them it's not the pay cut, it's what all else they would take if we give in. “Ellington would not have
hired me in two million years if it wasn't for the union raising a rackus about all people are created equal,” I said. “Or half of you either because they don't like cunts or coloreds.” I'm not that big of a person but I was standing up in front, and when I cussed, they shut up. “If my papa had been a chickenshit like you guys, I would be down at the Frosty King tonight in a little short skirt,” I said. “You bunch of no-goods would be on welfare and your kids pushing drugs to pay the rent.” Some of the guys laughed, but some didn't.

Men get pissed off in this certain way, though, where they have to tear something up. Lalo said, “Well, hell, let's drive a truck over the plant gate and shut the damn mine down.” And there they go, off and running, making plans to do it. Corvallis had a baseball cap on backwards and was sitting back with his arms crossed like, Honey, don't look at me. I could have killed him.

“Great, you guys, you do something cute like that and we're dead ducks,” I said. “We don't have to do but one thing, wait it out.”

“Till when?” Lalo wanted to know. “Till hell freezes?” He is kind of a short guy with about twelve tattoos on each arm.

“Till they get fed up with the scabs pissing around and want to get the mine running. If it comes down to busting heads, no way. Do you hear me? They'll have the National Guards in here.”

I knew I was right. The Boots in this town, the cops, they're on Ellington payroll. I've seen strikes before. When I was ten years old I saw a cop get a Mexican man down on the ground and kick his face till blood ran out of his ear. You would think I was the only one in that room that was born and raised in Bolton.

 

Ellington was trying to get back up to full production. They had them working twelve-hour shifts and seven-day weeks like
Abraham Lincoln had never freed the slaves. We started hearing about people getting hurt, but just rumors; it wasn't going to run in the paper. Ellington owns the paper.

The first I knew about it really was when Vonda come right to my house. I was running the vacuum cleaner and had the radio turned up all the way so I didn't hear her drive up. I just heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it: Vonda. Her skin looked like a flour tortilla. “What in the world,” I said.

Her bracelets were going clack-clack-clack, she was shaking so hard. “I never thought I'd be coming to you,” she said, like I was Dear Abby. “But something's happened to Tommy.”

“Oh,” I said. I had heard some real awful things: that a guy was pulled into a smelter furnace, and another guy got his legs run over on the tracks. I could picture Tommy either way, no legs or burnt up. We stood there a long time. Vonda looked like she might pass out. “Okay, come in,” I told her. “Set down there and I'll get you a drink of water. Water is all we got around here.” I stepped over the vacuum cleaner on the way to the kitchen. I wasn't going to put it away.

When I come back she was looking around the room all nervous, breathing like a bird. I turned down the radio.

“How are the kids?” she wanted to know, of all things.”

“The kids are fine. Tell me what happened to Tommy.”

“Something serious to do with his foot, that's all I know. Either cut off or half cut off, they won't tell me.” She pulled this little hanky out of her purse and blew her nose. “They sent him to Morse in the helicopter ambulance, but they won't say what hospital because I'm not next of kin. He doesn't have any next of kin here, I
told
them that. I informed them I was the fiancée.” She blew her nose again. “All they'll tell me is they don't want him in the Bolton hospital. I can't understand why.”

“Because they don't want nobody to know about it,” I told her. “They're covering up all the accidents.”

“Well, why would they want to do that?”

“Vonda, excuse me please, but don't be stupid. They want to do that so we won't know how close we are to winning the strike.”

Vonda took a little sip of water. She had on a yellow sundress and her arms looked so skinny, like just bones with freckles. “Well, I know what you think of me,” she finally said, “but for Tommy's sake maybe you can get the union to do something. Have an investigation so he'll at least get his compensation pay. I know you have a lot of influence on the union.”

“I don't know if I do or not,” I told her. I puffed my breath out and leaned my head back on the sofa. I pulled the bandana off my head and rubbed my hair in a circle. It's so easy to know what's right and so hard to do it.

“Vonda,” I said, “I thought a lot of Tommy before all this shit. He helped me one time when I needed it real bad.” She looked at me. She probably hated thinking of me and him being friends. “I'm sure Tommy knows he done the wrong thing,” I said. “But it gets me how you people treat us like kitchen trash and then come running to the union as soon as you need help.”

She picked up her glass and brushed at the water on the coffee table. I forgot napkins. “Yes, I see that now, and I'll try to make up for my mistake,” she said.

Give me a break, Vonda, was what I was thinking. “Well, we'll see,” I said. “There is a meeting coming up and I'll see what I can do. If you show up on the picket line tomorrow.”

Vonda looked like she swallowed one of her ice cubes. She went over to the TV and picked up the kids' pictures one at a time, Manuela then Tony. Put them back down. Went over to the
armario
built by my grandpapa.

“What a nice little statue,” she said.

“That's St. Joseph. Saint of people that work with their hands.”

She turned around and looked at me. “I'm sorry about the house. I won't take your house. It wouldn't be right.”

“I'm glad you feel that way, because I wasn't moving.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Vonda, I can remember when me and you were little girls and your daddy was already running the drugstore. You used to set up on a stool behind the counter and run the soda-water machine. You had a charm bracelet with everything in the world on it, poodle dogs and hearts and a real little pill box that opened.”

Vonda smiled. “I don't have the foggiest idea what ever happened to that bracelet. Would you like it for your girl?”

I stared at her. “But you don't remember me, do you?”

“Well, I remember a whole lot of people coming in the store. You in particular, I guess not.”

“I guess not,” I said. “People my color was not allowed to go in there and set at the soda fountain. We had to get paper cups and take our drinks outside. Remember that? I used to think and
think
about why that was. I thought our germs must be so nasty they wouldn't wash off the glasses.”

“Well, things have changed, haven't they?” Vonda said.

“Yeah.” I put my feet up on the coffee table. It's my damn table. “Things changed because the UTU and the Machinists and my papa's union the Boilermakers took this whole fucking company town to court in 1973, that's why. This house right here was for whites only. And if there wasn't no union forcing Ellington to abide by the law, it still would be.”

She was kind of looking out the window. She probably was thinking about what she was going to cook for supper.

“You think it wouldn't? You think Ellington would build a nice house for everybody if they could still put half of us in those falling-down shacks down by the river like I grew up in?”

“Well, you've been very kind to hear me out,” she said. “I'll
do what you want, tomorrow. Right now I'd better be on my way.”

I went out on the porch and watched her go down the sidewalk—click click, on her little spike heels. Her ankles wobbled.

“Vonda,” I yelled out after her, “don't wear high heels on the line tomorrow. For safety's sake.”

She never turned around.

 

Next day the guys were making bets on Vonda showing up or not. The odds were not real good in her favor. I had to laugh, but myself I really thought she would. It was a huge picket line for the morning shift change. The Women's Auxiliary thought it would boost up the morale, which needed a kick in the butt or somebody would be busting down the plant gate. Corvallis told me that some guys had a meeting after the real meeting and planned it out. But I knew that if I kept showing up at the union meetings and standing on the table and jumping and hollering, they wouldn't do it. Sometimes guys will listen to a woman.

The sun was just coming up over the canyon and already it was a hot day. Cicada bugs buzzing in the
paloverdes
like damn rattlesnakes. Me and Janie Marley were talking about our kids; she has a boy one size down from Tony and we trade clothes around. All of a sudden Janie grabs my elbow and says, “Look who's here.” It was Vonda getting out of the Lincoln. Not in high heels either. She had on a tennis outfit and plastic sunglasses and a baseball bat slung over her shoulder. She stopped a little ways from the line and was looking around, waiting for the Virgin Mary to come down, I guess, and save her. Nobody was collecting any bets.

“Come on, Vonda,” I said. I took her by the arm and stood her between me and Janie. “I'm glad you made it.” But she wasn't talking, just looking around a lot.

After a while I said, “We're not supposed to have bats up here. I know a guy that got his termination papers for carrying a crescent wrench in his back pocket. He had forgot it was even in there.” I looked at Vonda to see if she was paying attention. “It was Rusty Cochran,” I said, “you know him. He's up at your dad's every other day for a prescription. They had that baby with the hole in his heart.”

But Vonda held on to the bat like it was the last man in the world and she got him. “I'm only doing this for Tommy,” she says.

“Well, so what,” I said. “I'm doing it for my kids. So they can eat.”

She kept squinting her eyes down the highway.

A bunch of people started yelling. “Here come the ladies!” Some of the women from the Auxiliary were even saying it. And here come trouble. They were in Doreen's car, waving signs out the windows: “We Support Our Working Men” and other shit not worth repeating. Doreen was driving. She jerked right dead to a stop, right in front of us. She looked at Vonda and you would think she had broke both her hinges the way her mouth was hanging open, and Vonda looked back at Doreen, and the rest of us couldn't wait to see what was next.