In Dubious Battle Page 5

  Mac turned to a bench and sat down. "I know," he said. "I read Harry's report. Is that the only reason you wanted to join the Party?"

  "No," said Jim. "When I got in jail, there were five other men in the same cell, picked up at the same time--a Mexican and a Negro and a Jew and a couple of plain mongrel Americans like me. 'Course they talked to me, but it wasn't that. I'd read more than they knew." He picked up a maple leaf from the ground and began carefully stripping the covering from the hand-like skeleton. "Look," he said. "All the time at home we were fighting, fighting something--hunger mostly. My old man was fighting the bosses. I was fighting the school. But always we lost. And after a long time I guess it got to be part of our mind-stuff that we always would lose. My old man was fighting just like a cat in a corner with a pack of dogs around. Sooner or later a dog was sure to kill him; but he fought anyway. Can you see the hopelessness in that? I grew up in that hopelessness."

  "Sure, I can see," Mac said. "There's millions of people with just that."

  Jim waved the stripped leaf in front of him, and spun it between his thumb and forefinger. "There was more than that to it," he said. "The house where we lived was always filled with anger. Anger hung in the house like smoke; that beaten, vicious anger against the boss, against the superintendent, against the groceryman when he cut off credit. It was an anger that made you sick to your stomach, but you couldn't help it."

  "Go on," said Mac. "I don't see where you're getting, but maybe you do."

  Jim jumped up and stood in front of the bench and whipped the leaf skeleton across his palm. "I'm getting to this: In that cell were five men all raised in about the same condition. Some of them worse, even. And while there was anger in them, it wasn't the same kind of anger. They didn't hate a boss or a butcher. They hated the whole system of bosses, but that was a different thing. It wasn't the same kind of anger. And there was something else, Mac. The hopelessness wasn't in them. They were quiet, and they were working; but in the back of every mind there was conviction that sooner or later they would win their way out of the system they hated. I tell you, there was a kind of peacefulness about those men."

  "Are you trying to convert me?" Mac asked sarcastically.

  "No, I'm trying to tell you. I'd never known any hope or peacefulness, and I was hungry for it. I probably knew more about so-called radical movements than any of those men. I'd read more, but they had the thing I wanted, and they'd got it by working."

  Mac said sharply, "Well, you typed a few letters tonight. Do you feel any better?"

  Jim sat down again. "I liked doing it, Mac," he said softly. "I don't know why. It seemed a good thing to be doing. It seemed to have some meaning. Nothing I ever did before had any meaning. It was all just a mess. I don't think I resented the fact that someone profited from the mess, but I did hate being in the rat-cage."

  Mac thrust his legs out straight before him and put his hands in his pockets. "Well," he said, "if work will keep you happy, you've got a pretty jolly time ahead of you. If you'll learn to cut stencils and run a mimeograph I can almost guarantee you twenty hours a day. And if you hate the profit system, I can promise you, Jim, you won't get a damn cent for it." His voice was genial.

  Jim said, "Mac, you're the boss in the joint back there, aren't you?"

  "Me? No, I tell 'em what to do, but they don't have to do it. I can't issue any orders. The only orders that really stick are the ones that come down after a vote."

  "Well, anyway, you've got some say, Mac. What I'd really like to do is get into the field. I'd like to get into the action."

  Mac laughed softly. "You want punishment, don't you? Well, I don't know but what the committee'll think a hell of a lot more of a good typist. You'll have to put romance off for a while--the noble Party assaulted by the beast of Capitalism." Suddenly his tone changed and he turned on Jim. "It's all work," he said. "In the field it's hard work and dangerous work. But don't think it's so soft at the joint, either. You don't know what night a bunch of American Legioners all full of whisky and drum corps music may come down and beat hell out of you. I've been through it, I tell you. There's no veteran like the man who got drafted into the army and served six months in a training camp punching a bayonet into a sack of sawdust. The men who were in the trenches are mostly different; but for pure incendiarism and brass knuckle patriotism, give me twenty training camp ex-soldiers. Why twenty of 'em will protect their country from five kids any dark night when they can get a little whisky. Most of 'em got their wound stripes because they were too drunk to go to a prophylaxis station."

  Jim chuckled. "You don't like soldiers much, do you, Mac?"

  "I don't like the ex-soldiers with the gold hats. I was in France. They were good, honest, stupid cattle. They didn't like it, but they were nice guys." His voice sobered down. Jim saw him grin quickly in embarrassment. "I got hot, didn't I, Jim? I'll tell you why. Ten of the brave bastards licked me one night. And after they'd licked me unconscious they jumped on me and broke my right arm. And then they set fire to my mother's house. My mother pulled me out in the front yard."

  "What happened?" Jim asked. "What were you doing?"

  The sarcasm came back into Mac's voice. "Me? I was subverting the government. I'd made a speech saying there were some people starving." He stood up. "Let's go back, Jim. They ought to have the dishes washed up by now. I didn't mean to get bitter, but somehow that busted arm still makes me mad."

  They walked slowly back down the path. A few men on the benches pulled in their legs to let them by.

  Jim said, "If you can ever put in a word, Mac, so I can get out in the field to work, I'll be glad."

  "O.K. But you'd better learn to cut stencils and run a mimeograph. You're a good kid; I'm glad to have you with us."

  3

  JIM sat under the hard white light typewriting letters. Occasionally he stopped and listened, his ears turned toward the door. Except for a kettle simmering huskily in the kitchen, the house was still. The soft roar of streetcars on distant streets, the slap of feet on the pavement in front only made the inside seem more quiet. He looked up at the alarm clock hanging to a nail on the wall. He got up and went into the kitchen and stirred the stew, and turned down the gas until each jet held a tiny blue globe.

  As he went back to the typewriter he heard quick steps on the gravelled path. Dick came bursting into the house. "Mac's not here yet?"

  "No," said Jim. "He hasn't got here. Neither has Joy. Collect any money today?"

  "Twenty dollars," said Dick.

  "Boy, you sure do it, I don't know how. We could eat for a month on that; but Mac'll probably spend it all on stamps. Lord, how he goes through stamps."

  "Listen," Dick cried. "I think I hear Mac now."

  "Or Joy."

  "No, it's not Joy."

  The door opened and Mac entered. "Hello, Jim. Hello, Dick. Get any money out of the sympathizers today?"

  "Twenty dollars."

  "Good boy!"

  "Say, Mac, Joy did it this afternoon."

  "Did what?"

  "Well, he started a crazy speech on a street corner and a cop picked him up, and Joy stuck the cop in the shoulder with a pocket knife. They got him locked up, and they got felonious assault on the book. He's sitting in a cell right now, yelling 'son-of-a-bitch' at the top of his lungs."

  "I thought he was screwier than usual this morning. Now listen, Dick. I've got to get out of here tomorrow morning, and I've got things to do now. You run to a public phone and call George Camp, Ottman 4211. Tell him the works, and tell him Joy's nuts. Tell him to get down there if he can and say he's Joy's attorney. Joy's got a sweet record if they put it on him--about six incites to riot, twenty or thirty vagrancies, and about a dozen resists and simple assaults. They'll give him the works if George doesn't get busy. Tell George to try to spring him for a drunk." He paused. "Jesus! If a sanity board ever gets hold of that poor devil, he's in for life. Tell George to try to get Joy to keep his mouth shut. And when you do that, Dick, you make th
e rounds and try to pick up some bail money--in case."

  "Can't I eat first?" Dick asked.

  "Hell, no. Get George down there. Here, give me ten of the twenty. Jim and I are going down to the Torgas Valley tomorrow. After you call George, come back and eat. And then start rounding up the sympathizers for bail. I hope to God George can get out a writ and get bail set sometime tonight."

  Dick said, "O.K.," and hurried out.

  Mac turned to Jim. "I guess they'll have to lock poor Joy up pretty soon, for good. He's a long way gone. This is the first time he ever used a knife."

  Jim pointed to a pile of finished letters on the desk. "There they are, Mac. Three more to do, that's all. Where'd you say we're going?"

  "Down the Torgas Valley. There're thousands of acres of apples ready to pick down there. Be damn near two thousand fruit tramps. Well, the Growers' Association just announced a pay cut to the pickers. They'll be sore as hell. If we can get a good ruckus going down there we might be able to spread it over to the cotton fields in Tandale. And then we would have something. That'd be a fuss!" He sniffed the air. "Say, that stew smells swell. Is it ready?"

  "I'll dish it up," said Jim. He brought in two bowls half full of soup, out of which arose a mound of meat squares, potatoes and carrots, pale turnips and steaming whole onions.

  Mac put his bowl on the table and tasted it. "Christ! Let it cool. It's like this, Jim, I always said we shouldn't send green men into trouble areas. They make too many mistakes. You can read all the tactics you want and it won't help much. Well, I remembered what you said in the park that night when you first came, so when I got this assignment, and it's a nice assignment, I asked if I could take you along as a kind of understudy. I've been out, see? I'll train you, and then you can train new men. Kind of like teaching hunting dogs by running them with the old boys, see? You can learn more by getting into it than by reading all you like. Ever been in the Torgas Valley, Jim?"

  Jim blew on a hot potato. "I don't even know where it is," he said. "I've only been out of town four or five times in my life. Thanks for taking me, Mac." His small grey eyes were ashine with excitement.

  "You'll probably cuss hell out of me before we're through if we get in a mess down there. It's going to be no picnic. I hear the Growers' Association is pretty well organized."

  Jim gave up trying to eat the hot stew. "How we going to go about it, Mac? What do we do first?"

  Mac looked over at him and saw his excitement, and laughed. "I don't know, Jim. That's the trouble with reading, you see. We just have to use any material we can pick up. That's why all the tactics in the world won't do it. No two are exactly alike." For a while he ate in silence, finished off his stew, and when he exhaled, steam came out of his mouth. "Enough for another helping, Jim? I'm hungry."

  Jim went to the kitchen and filled his bowl again.

  Mac said, "Here's the layout. Torgas is a little valley, and it's mostly apple orchards. Most of it's owned by a few men. Of course there's some little places, but there's not very many of them. Now when the apples are ripe the crop tramps come in and pick them. And from there they go on over the ridge and south, and pick the cotton. If we can start the fun in the apples, maybe it will just naturally spread over into the cotton. Now these few guys that own most of the Torgas Valley waited until most of the crop tramps were already there. They spent most of their money getting there, of course. They always do. And then the owners announced their price cut. Suppose the tramps are mad? What can they do? They've got to work picking apples to get out even."

  Jim's dinner was neglected. With his spoon he stirred the meat and potatoes around and around. He leaned forward. "So then we try to get the men to strike? Is that it?"

  "Sure. Maybe it's all ready to bust and we just give it a little tiny push. We organize the men, and then we picket the orchards."

  Jim said, "Suppose the owners raise the wages to get their apples picked?"

  Mac pushed away his finished second bowl. "Well, we'd find another job to do somewhere else soon enough. Hell, we don't want only temporary pay raises, even though we're glad to see a few poor bastards better off. We got to take the long view. A strike that's settled too quickly won't teach the men how to organize, how to work together. A tough strike is good. We want the men to find out how strong they are when they work together."

  "Well, suppose," Jim insisted, "suppose the owners do meet the demands?"

  "I don't think they will. There's the bulk of power in the hands of a few men. That always makes 'em cocky. Now we start our strike, and Torgas County gets itself an ordinance that makes congregation unlawful. Now what happens? We congregate the men. A bunch of sheriff's men try to push them around, and that starts a fight. There's nothing like a fight to cement the men together. Well, then the owners start a vigilantes committee, bunch of fool shoe clerks, or my friends the American Legion boys trying to pretend they aren't middle-aged, cinching in their belts to hide their pot-bellies--there I go again. Well, the vigilantes start shooting. If they knock over some of the tramps we have a public funeral; and after that, we get some real action. Maybe they have to call out the troops." He was breathing hard in excitement. "Jesus, man! The troops win, all right! But every time a guardsman jabs a fruit tramp with a bayonet a thousand men all over the country come on our side. Christ Almighty! If we can only get the troops called out." He settled back on his cot. "Aw, I'm looking ahead too much. Our job's just to push along our little baby strike, if we can. But God damn it, Jim, if we could get the National Guard called out, now with the crops coming ready, we'd have the whole district organized by spring."

  Jim had been crouching on his bed, his eyes shining and his jaws set. Now and then his fingers went nervously to his throat. Mac continued, "The damn fools think they can settle strikes with soldiers." He laughed. "Here I go again--talking like a soap-boxer. I get all worked up, and that's not so good. We got to think good. Oh say, Jim, have you got some blue jeans?"

  "No. This suit's all the clothes I own."

  "Well, we'll have to go out and buy you some in a second-hand store, then. You're going to pick apples, boy. And you're going to sleep in jungles. And you're going to do Party work after you've done ten hours in the orchard. Here's the work you wanted."

  Jim said, "Thanks, Mac. My old man always had to fight alone. He got licked every time."

  Mac came and stood over him. "Get those three letters finished, Jim, and then we'll go out and buy you some jeans."

  4

  THE sun was just clearing the buildings of the city when Jim and Mac came to the railroad yards, where the shining metals converged and separated and spread out into the great gridiron of storage tracks where line after line of cars stood.

  Mac said, "There's a freight train supposed to go out at seven-thirty, empties. Let's go down the track a way." He hurried through the yard toward the end, where the many tracks drew together into the main line.

  "Do we have to get it on the move?" Jim asked.

  "Oh, it won't be going fast. I forgot, you never caught a freight, did you?"

  Jim spread his stride in an attempt to walk on every other tie, and found he couldn't quite make it. "Seems to me I never did much of anything," he admitted. "Everything's new to me."

  "Well, it's easy now. The company lets guys ride. In the old days it was tough. Train crews used to throw the stiffs off a moving train when they could catch them."

  A great black water tower stood beside the track, its goose-neck spout raised up against its side. The multitude of tracks was behind them, and only one line of worn and mirror-polished rails extended ahead. "Might as well sit down and wait," said Mac. "She'll be along pretty soon now."

  The long, lonely howl of a train whistle and the slow crash of escaping steam sounded at the end of his words. And at the signal, men began to stand up out of the ditch beside the track and to stretch their arms lazily in the cool morning sun.

  "We're going to have company," Mac observed.

  The long f
reight of empties came slowly down the yard, red box-cars and yellow refrigerator cars, black iron gondolas and round tank cars. The engine went by at little more pace than a man could walk, and the engineer waved a black, shiny glove at the men in the ditch. He yelled, "Going to the picnic?" and playfully released a spurt of white steam from between the wheels.

  Mac said, "We want a box-car. There, that one. The door's open a little." Trotting beside the car he pushed at the door. "Give a hand," he called. Jim put his hand to the iron handle and threw his weight against it. The big sliding door screeched rustily open a few feet. Mac put his hands on the sill, vaulted, turned in the air and landed in a sitting position in the doorway. Quickly he stood up out of the way while Jim imitated him. The floor of the car was littered with lining paper, torn down from the walls. Mac kicked a pile of the paper together and forced it against the wall. "Get yourself some," he shouted. "It makes a nice cushion."

  Before Jim had piled up his paper, a new head appeared in the doorway. A man flung himself in and two more followed him. The first man looked quickly about the car floor and then stood over Mac. "Got just about all of it, didn't you?"

  "Got what?" Mac asked innocently.

  "The paper. You done a good clean job."

  Mac smiled disarmingly. "We didn't know there was guests coming." He stood up. "Here, take some of it."

  The man gaped at Mac for a moment, and then he leaned over and picked up the whole cushion of papers.

  Mac touched him gently on the shoulder. "All right, punk," he said in a monotone. "Put it all down. If you're going to be a hog you don't get none."

  The man dropped the paper. "You going to make me?" he asked.