Power (49 page)

“Why in hell do I always feel sorry for you?”

I shook my head. She came over to me, and I took her in my arms. “Oh, Jesus, Al,” she whispered, “feel a little sorry for me now. I was right at the end of the rope. If you hadn't done that—”

But I didn't do it because she was at the end of a rope. I did it because something had happened to me or begun to happen, and because what I felt for her was more than I had felt for any woman in a very long time.

 

8

Ben had phoned to say that he would join me for dinner, the conference with the governor and the company people to follow. Lena and I had a drink in the bar just before dinner. She didn't want to meet Ben. She said that she would have a sandwich in the room.

“Try to get a typewriter up in the room,” I said to her. “Ben wants me to do the release on this tonight if it winds up tonight.”

“Will it?”

“He thinks so,” I said. “Take a nap, just in case you're up half the night.”

“You understand why I don't want to see Ben, don't you, Al?”

“I understand.”

“What did he say about Mark? People think of themselves—there's nothing wrong with that. But I know how it must be for Ben without Mark. Was he terribly upset?”

There was no point in lying to her. “He never mentioned Mark,” I replied.

“No. I can't believe that.”

“He was full of a great many things,” I told her. “We both know Ben. We know him a long, long time.”

“I suppose we do,” Lena said slowly.

I took her up to the room and left her there. It was a half hour past midnight when I returned, and she was sprawled on one of the beds, asleep. Gently, I awakened her, and she was able to smile when she saw me. “Hello, Al,” she said. “My dear Al—”

I asked her how she felt.

“Good enough. You want to work?”

“I'll dictate. You're not too tired for dictation?”

“Let me wash up. Some cold water, and I'll be all right.”

A few minutes later, she had seated herself with a pad on her knee, and I began:

“Last night, December 23, 1937, Benjamin Renwell Holt, president of the International Miners Union, met with the governor of Michigan and with the representatives of the largest automobile manufacturer in the world. They met on the twelfth day of the sit-down strike of the auto workers of Blent, Michigan—a strike whose drama and spirit has captured the attention and has stimulated the imagination of the entire world.

“Each day of this strange and original strike, during which ten thousand workers occupied the plant in which they worked and held it in ransom for a union contract, has supplied increasingly tense drama—a drama which culminated in a battle of giants in a room of the Prince George Hotel in Detroit—”

“That last is awkward,” Lena said. “It might be better simply to say that the last act took place here in the hotel.”

“It's all right if you want to change it. Now I'll continue.

“Three parties entered the room, each determined to wring concessions from the others. But of the three, only Ben Holt knew that so long as he lived and breathed, there could be no concessions concerning that which was basic to his existence—the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively. He went into this historic meeting determined to win that right for the auto workers, just as he had won it through his years of struggle for the coal miners.”

Lena looked up at me now. “Do you want it that way, Al?”

“Do you think it's a lie?”

“I wasn't at the conference, Al.”

“You don't have to be there to know whether that's a lie or not.”

“Then you tell me, Al.”

“Honey, I'm not writing history or rewriting history. Ben asked me to do this. I haven't quit my job yet, so I'm doing it.”

“What really happened in that room, Al?”

I thought about it for a while, before I said, “What had to happen. The time was ripe. You remember 1924?”

“I remember it,” Lena nodded.

“You remember how we went out to the Arrowhead Pit? Ben had gone to Cairo. Things moved. Things happened. You couldn't change anything and I couldn't. Do you think Ben could have?”

“I've often wondered,” Lena said.

“I doubt it. We lost the strike. Ben couldn't stop that. Then the union crumbled—could Ben or anyone have stopped it?”

“I don't know, Al.”

“When we came into the conference tonight, I knew what had to happen. So did Ben. It's a chain of things, and God knows where the beginning is. The auto workers took the plant. Thousands of other workers supported them, and all over the country people prayed for them and supported them too. Some of the National Guardsmen were auto workers and some of them were rubber workers and other kinds of workers, and none of them knew what they would do if they were ordered to take that plant by force. Ben knew that. The president of the company knew that. The governor knew it. And in Washington, the President of the United States knew it. So whatever they might have hedged with, they knew when they walked into that room with Ben tonight that an agreement would be signed. There was no other way out of it for any of them.”

“Is that what you're going to write?” Lena asked.

“No, that's not what I am going to write. It's also late. Do you mind if I continue?”

“Go ahead,” Lena said. “That's what I'm here for.”

A half hour later, I came to the end of the piece:

“Thus, one man emerges as the giant the American labor movement has waited for, hoped for, prayed for—a man called Benjamin Renwell Holt. The undisputed leader of American labor today, a man dedicated to the creation of a mighty federation of industrial unions, he stands erect and triumphant, the eyes of the whole nation upon him—”

I sprawled on my bed, smoking, watching Lena as she typed it out.

 

9

There was a party going on in Ben's suite, and he had asked me to come down there the moment the release was finished. He asked me to bring Lena when I told him that she was in Detroit with me. The party was in the way of a victory celebration, and there would be people from Blent there and people from other places too, and it was likely to go on all night.

Lena said that she wouldn't come with me, to Ben's suite, but would stay in the room and pack, if I didn't mind. “You're not tired?” I wondered. But she had slept for three hours and was more worried about me. I told her that I could sleep on a train or a plane or anywhere, which was more or less true.

The suite was packed. Counting newspapermen, there must have been almost a hundred people jammed in there, and I imagine that the noise kept half the hotel awake. If the hotel had objections, they didn't voice them. The Miners Union was picking up the tab, and a steady stream of waiters brought mountains of sandwiches and crates of champagne, whisky, gin, or whatever your fancy turned to. As more and more people poured in, the hotel made an adjoining suite available. It was not enough. The party poured out into the corridors.

I fought my way in and finally managed to break through the press of people to where Ben was. He greeted me with a bear hug, and pulled me with him into a washroom, locking the door behind him. “Isn't this a hell of a note?” he grinned. “That we got to lock ourselves into a can to get a few words in private. Where's Lena?”

I gave him the release instead of answering his question, and immediately he began to read it. While he read, I watched him. He was in a condition of high excitement, reward, and achievement—and more than anything else at that moment, he desired to read the picture of himself on the typewritten sheets. When he had finished, he said,

“That's it! Al, how do you do it, every time?”

“What do I do with it now?”

“I'll take it,” he said, putting it in his pocket. “I'll get the local boys here to turn it out immediately—but, by God, if it comes to the press, I'll read them this myself. To hell with modesty. I don't feel modest tonight. I'm sitting right on top of the world tonight.”

“I'm glad you feel that way, Ben,” I said.

“Sure you are! I wish Mark was here with us—all of us together to see this happen. That's how it should be.”

“Well, I'm glad I'm here tonight, anyway, Ben, because I'm leaving you.”

“What? You mean you're going back to Pomax? Al, you can't do that. I need you here with me.”

“I don't mean Pomax, Ben,” I said carefully. “I'm leaving the union for good. I'm quitting.”

“Al, are you out of your mind?”

“No—no, I'm quitting, Ben.”

“Al, you're crazy or you're drunk! Which is it?”

“I'm sober, Ben.”

“Then what in hell are you talking about? This is no time to talk like that. This is a victory celebration. You want to cry on my shoulder, do it tomorrow. I've had a long day, Al, and I've had it.”

“I know, Ben. It just works out that way. I'm sorry, but I can't help it.”

“Why? All I'm asking is why?”

“It's no use trying to explain.”

“Al, you son of a bitch—Al, do you know what I made up my mind to do? I made up my mind that when we shift our operations to Washington, I'd put you on the payroll for fifteen thousand a year. That's a promise. Al, this is only the beginning. We're going to have something so big and powerful I don't even dare to dream about it—and you, you son of a bitch, telling me you're quitting! The hell with that now! You want to talk to me, talk to me tomorrow. Get drunk now! Live a little! Quitting! You bastard!”

He put an arm around me and swept me back into the suite with him. He was immediately surrounded by people, and I was able to fight my way out of there unnoticed.

When I returned to the room, Lena had our suitcases packed. She told me that she had been able to make reservations on the first plane to New York, at six o'clock in the morning. Since it was after 3
A.M.
already, we had time for breakfast before we left for the airport, and then not too long a wait there.

“Did you tell him?” Lena wanted to know.

“I tried.”

“He wouldn't believe you?”

“No, he wouldn't believe me,” I said.

“I didn't think he would,” Lena said. “It couldn't make any sense to him.”

 

10

Lena and I were married in New York. We never returned to Pomax again. Lena had nothing there that she wanted, and the few things of my own that remained there were mailed to me by Oscar Suzic. Ben sent me a check of a thousand dollars for severance pay and a check for half that amount to Lena. The letter that came with it said:

Dear Al:

I had to let my anger cool down before I could write this at all. It has always seemed to me that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and I don't mind saying that you chose the wrong way. There were only two people in my life that I trusted completely and felt close to—as close as to blood brothers. Those two were yourself and Mark Golden. Mark died, and you walked out. I'm not going to ask you why, because at this moment, I just don't give a damn.

In appreciation of your loyalty during the past years, I am enclosing this check. I wish you and Lena the best for the future.

I did not hear from Ben Holt again, until I saw him for the last time in 1954. The years between that time and the time we had left Detroit were spent by Lena and myself in upstate New York, where I took over my father's weekly, paid off the debts, and managed to operate a fairly successful small-town newspaper. For the first time in our lives, Lena and I were reasonably content, reasonably happy. I would note an Associated Press piece on occasion, such as the item which told that Benjamin Renwell Holt of the Miners Union had raised his pay to fifty thousand dollars a year, or the item that told of the purchase of the new Union Building in Washington, or the item that spoke of the first great coal strike after Pearl Harbor—of the beginning of the violent feud between the President of the United States and Benjamin Holt.

Lena and I talked about these things, but not to distraction. Time blurs the edges of everything.

In the spring of 1954, Lena and I took a much needed holiday in New York City. The years had been kind to both of us, and if Lena's hair was white, her figure was still slim and firm, her eyes as blue and exciting as ever. There was an afternoon when I left her at a matinee that she wanted to see and I wanted to avoid; and since the day was bright and pleasant, I walked uptown along Madison Avenue. I was passing the street entrance of a brokerage house, when a man emerged who looked familiar, and a moment later, I was shaking hands with Oscar Suzic—a heavier, older Oscar Suzic, but still the man I had known and liked.

With a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment, pleasure at seeing me, embarrassment at emerging from the brokerage house, he explained that he had a few shares of stock that required some attention. “We all begin to think about our old age, don't we, Al?” I agreed that we did, and said that I wished I had a few decent stocks. “Ben is the one to advise you on that,” Oscar said. “You know the way Ben is—anything he touches he has to learn from A to Z.”

Ben was that way, I agreed.

“He began investing about eight years ago,” Oscar said. “He's a very wealthy man now,” he added with respect. “But it hasn't changed him, Al. His principles still stand.”

“How is Ben?”

“Al,” he said, “why don't you come along with me? They're giving a little reception for Ben at the Astor, nothing very big, cocktails and so on, just an opportunity for him to pass the time of day with the local labor leaders here in town. I'm on my way there now.”

“You think it would be all right, Oscar? No warning—just to drop me in there?”