The glow came closer, blocks and angles of shadow moved among the stringers overhead. There was a sound of stumbling, and an unguarded voice said almost aloud, laughing, “Yudas priest, give us some light!”
Joe rolled his head rigidly toward old Art, and in the vague passing glow saw the Austrian’s stiff face, the strained whites of his eyes. There was no mistaking the owner of that vaudeville-Swede accent and that laugh, and it did not take a very bright imagination to know who was with him.
As soon as the glow was well past, disappearing, blocked out by big heavy areas of solid dark, Manderich touched Joe and swung his legs and let himself down to the next layer and thence to the floor. Joe came after him, ready to laugh at the way they had cowered in the dark scared of every noise, in the very warehouse in all San Pedro where there was least chance a watchman would come that night.
They moved as cautiously as if the two ahead were police, creeping toward the faint glow. Joe imagined the look on Otto’s face when they surprised him. He had everything arranged so neatly—a fix with the night watchman who left a door open and stayed away for a certain time, then maybe a dray outside, or a house somewhere nearby where the stuff could be temporarily stored until it was safe to move it. With everything arranged in advance, Otto was obviously not afraid of being seen or heard. He would jump out of his skin when they popped up from behind something.
From a barricade of crates he and Manderich watched Otto and John stoop and pull among long, cylindrical bales—rugs, by their look. The lantern threw their shadows wide and huge. Hoisting a bale on each shoulder, they carried them to the doorway, dumped them, and came back for more, working silently and fast.
“Look at the sonsofpitches!” Manderich whispered harshly in Joe’s ear. “Union men!”
That was the first indication Joe had had that their spying from the darkness had any other object than a joke. But in the obscurity he could just see Art’s face. It was set like cement.
John and Otto were stooping for a third load when Manderich stepped into the light, Joe just behind him. The thieves spun around, crouching. If it had been a joke it would have been very laughable to see how Otto’s hands let go of the bale and how the right one jerked inside the breast of his coat, and how John stood stupidly with his mouth open, a bale hanging limply from his hands.
“Making qvite a haul,” Manderich said. After the whispering and the dry cautious hisses his voice grated.
The momentary tableau relaxed, Otto straightened slowly, his face assuming the silly dangling grin that it habitually wore. Recognizing Art and Joe, John sat down on a bale and wiped his forehead.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Otto said. “What are you guys doing down here?” As his eyes came over to Joe, his smile deepened as if he acknowledged and understood something.
Art’s dry, unlubricated croak said, “Ve got a tip from headqvarters dere vas some shtealing going on.”
Strolling past the lantern, he experimentally kicked the bale that John sat on, testing with his toe what it contained. John wagged his head, “Holy smoke …” he said.
With the speed of a cat springing Manderich was on Otto, bear-hugging him, wrestling him down. Before Joe could move or John get his feet under him to rise, Art had stepped back with a flat black automatic in his hand. Otto rose slowly from one knee, watching him pull the clip and pump the shell from the chamber. Without turning Manderich passed gun and clip and shells back to Joe, who dropped them in his pocket.
“I vouldn’t take a chance on you, Otto,” Art said. “You are too crooked to trust.”
The smile had not quite left Otto’s face, but his eyes were narrowed almost shut and his lips were stiffly curved, like something modeled in wax. Confused and unsure, taken for an ally by Manderich but unwilling to put himself against John and Otto, Joe stayed back. He did not especially like Otto, but he half resented the way Manderich acted like the chief of police.
“What do you want?” Otto said slowly. “A cut? You didn’t have to strongarm your way in. Four of us can pack out twice as much as two.”
“Cut?” Art said. “Listen, you sonofapitch, vhile I tell you somet’ing. Effery time somebody lifts some cargo, who gets blamed? The IWW, so? I do not like a sonofapitch who goes around shtealing tings vhile he hides behindt a union button.”
Otto’s stiff lips curved more deeply. Joe saw that they were rigid with anger, but Otto stayed quiet and loose, shoulders drooping, arms hanging. He said only, “When did you sprout wings?”
“I am not holy, by Gott,” Manderich said. “I am only …”
“Or the union either?” Otto said. “Maybe you’d like me to list a few …”
“You shut your gott damned mout’!” Manderich said. On the bale John Alberg stirred, glanced almost desperately at Joe, opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. Out behind the tense little lighted core Joe could hear the silence of the warehouse hum.
“Dere iss a difference between a revolutionary and a gott damn t’ief,” Manderich said. “I am telling you somet’ing now. Vunce I knew a hood up in Tacoma like you, using the union to hid behindt. He vas found out along the tracks. A union hass no place for hoods. I vonder vot the boys vould say if I should tell aboudt you.”
Joe moved, merely to make his presence felt, because for a moment he thought that Otto would be fool enough to tackle Manderich. What John would do if it came to a fight was hard to say. Probably nothing. He looked hangdog, like a shamed boy, on the edge of the argument.
But in a moment the tension relaxed slightly, and Joe saw that Otto had appraised his chances and given up the notion to fight. He stared steadily at Manderich, his hair hanging lank on both sides of his face.
“I t’ink it vould be smardt if you got oudt of San Pedro,” Art said.
“Ya?” Otto said. “Suppose I didn’t think it was smart to?”
“Ven you t’ink it ofer, you vill not be here any more,” Art said. He picked up the lantern and motioned the two to walk. Joe fell in beside John.
“What are you mixed up in this for?”
“Holy yee, I don’t know,” John said. “I needed few bucks.”
By the outside door Otto turned. “Don’t be a damn fool, Art. There’s two or three hundred in this. I got a deal all fixed. We can lug it out of here and be gone in half an hour, and nobody is hurt but the S.P.”
To Joe Art said, “Take a look outside vhile I muffle the light.”
He wrapped the lantern in his coat, and Joe slid the door a few inches, holding his eye to the crack until it adjusted to the grayer dark outside. There was neither light nor step, sight nor sound. “Seems all clear.”
Manderich’s grunt had a heavy pleased finality. He held the lantern high and looked around. Back from the door was some crated machinery, and beyond that the bales of doormats where he and Joe had lain. The three watched him in silence while he dragged the rugs Otto and John had dumped by the door over to the foot of the bales.
“Are you damn fool enough to throw away two or three hundred dollars?” Otto said. His voice was shriller, somewhere between whisper and shout.
“You vatch me,” Art said. “I vill giff you a lesson in how a revolutionary iss different from a t’ief.”
They saw him twist the cap on the fuel tank and upend the lantern over the bales. The chimney shattered thinly as his heavy foot swung. One bright lick of flame climbed the side of the pile, and then Joe heard the door and turned to see Otto jump. John hesitated a moment, his big stunned face working, before he too plunged and was gone.
Joe leaped after him with Manderich just behind. The sliding door jolted to, and they were running again.
8 San Pedro, July, 1910
Not more than fifteen minutes later Joe came up the alley that paralleled Beacon Street. He was not running—had not run since he and Art had split at the edge of the yards. He walked casually, like a man with nothing on his mind, but because of his face he kept to the darker streets, and rather than come to the
mission by the front door he slipped in behind. There was a light showing through the dirty kitchen window. He tried the door without knocking; it opened.
The moment he got inside it felt very late. He wondered if Lund were still up. A turned-down kerosene lamp was smoking as if forgotten on the table. But he had hardly taken a step toward the inner door when it opened and Lund looked through. A deep cleft appeared between his eyes. “What happened?”
Joe laughed. “Little fight.”
“I’d hate to see you after a big fight,” Lund said. “Sit down, let me look.”
When he started to pull off Joe’s coat, the automatic clunked solidly against the chair. The missionary’s hand went down and felt through the cloth. He did not indicate by word or look what he thought, but turned up the lamp, filled a basin with warm water, and dabbed at the caked cheek and lip. His dry voice said, “What hit you?”
“I don’t know. Dinner pail, lantern, something. I was looking somewhere else when I got it.”
With the dried blood removed from his face Joe could feel the slashed lips of the cuts open when he moved the muscles of his mouth. He put his fingers up to feel, and Lund knocked them down sharply.
“How bad are they?” Joe said.
“Bad enough. One down from the corner of your mouth, one down around on your neck, the wing of your nose gone. You’ll have to be sewed up.”
“No, no doctor.”
Lund scowled. His voice was as harsh as Manderich’s. “Nobody asked you. I’m telling you. You sit still here.”
The inner door swung after him and in a moment there was the noise of cranking as he wound the telephone. Another considerable pause, then words, then the click, and Lund came back. With hands on hips he stood and looked Joe over, and after a moment he undid the collar button and let the bloody collar spring open and pulled off the stiff string tie. Dumping the bloody water from the pan, he drew another panful and began sousing collar and tie in it. Watching him, Joe began to grin.
“No scolding?”
Lund said disgustedly, “If you didn’t want a scolding, why did you come here?”
The question surprised Joe. For half a dozen reasons he had not headed for the shack, but why had he come here instead of to the hall? Since he had no answer, he gave none. After a while Lund shoved the big coffeepot onto the ring and lit the gas, and a few minutes later he went to the front door, locked for the night, to admit the doctor.
The doctor looked at Joe’s cuts without comment, took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and laid Joe on his back on the kitchen table. After the hand-scrubbing and the daubing of the wounds and the stink of carbolic there was the sewing. Holding himself relaxed by a rigid act of will, Joe lay staring upward through eyes veiled as if a membrane were drawn over them, and counted each stitch as it went in through the flaps of skin and was tied and cut. He despised the doctor for a clumsy fool, who sewed like a sailor mending a sail. The needle was dull, the thread pulled through as if resined, the doctor’s hands smelled of carbolic and his breath was loud through his nose as he worked. But eventually he stood back, wiping his hands.
“You’ve got your nerve,” he said. A statement, no more.
Almost gagged with bandages, Joe sat up and felt for his purse. “How much?”
“Two dollars.”
Joe laid the bills in his hand.
“Come into the office in three days,” the doctor said. He had bristly white hair and a close-clipped mustache, and as he closed his bag he lifted one side of his face in a grimace of controlled amusement. Then Lund let him out.
The coffee had filled the room with steam. Silently Lund came back, poured two cups, stood back against the sink blowing into the chipped white mug. Joe tried taking a sip past the clumsy bandages, but the heat hurt his cut lip. He looked at Lund, knowing that the missionary would not ask questions. It had been quite a day—so much of a day that he could tell Lund hardly any of it.
“We were down on the picket line at the Hammond dock,” he said. “Scabs came off shift and a squabble started. First thing I knew somebody beaned me with something.”
Lund’s face wore an expression of polite attention, but he said nothing.
“All right,” Joe said. “You don’t believe me.”
The sober regard of Lund’s eyes did not change. “It’s a little hard to imagine you an innocent bystander in a fight,” he said. Then he leaned forward and significantly swung the blue serge coat until the gun knocked on the chair.
“That?” Joe said. “We took that away from a guy.”
Still Lund said nothing, and Joe grew irritable in the face of the steady look. “That’s all,” he said. “We took it away from a guy.”
“During the fight?”
“No, later.”
He tried to pull the collarband together and hook the collar button, but the bandage came down over the cut in his neck and the collar would not meet. It made him mad to try to talk with his stiff mouth half muffled, and the carbolic smell spoiled the flavor of the coffee. It angered him to see the fatherly, troubled suspicion waver in Lund’s eyes.
“If I wanted to carry a gun, would I carry it loose in my pocket with the clip out and a lot of loose cartridges around?” he said. He turned the pocket inside out, dumping gun and clip and shells on the table.
“All right, Joe,” Lund said quietly, and rubbed his hands together. “It’s none of my business. I have no right to put you through any third degree.” His heavy mustaches parted in a brief, square-toothed smile, and he said in a different voice, “What were you doing down on the picket line?”
“We’re supporting the trainmen.”
“Who’s we?”
“The IWW.”
“That’s quite a lot of support, to nearly get your throat cut in a riot.”
“Any strike is our strike,” Joe said.
For quite a while Lund leaned against the sink and watched him with a faint, puzzled smile. Finally he said, “You’ve really made a choice, then. You’re really in it heart and soul.”
There seemed so much weight in the question that Joe considered, holding the missionary’s eyes. One thing had led to another since he had come back to Pedro, but he hadn’t had to let himself be led. He could have turned at any point. He hadn’t had to join up, or turn himself into a song-mill, or help bust the heckler at the meeting, or agree to Barnabas’ proposition, or go down to walk the picket line, or reach for Harry Piper to knock sense into his scab head. He could have stopped anywhere, nobody had pushed him against his will.
“I guess so,” he said. “Sure.”
“Sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Doing?”
“What’s your life going to be like from now on?”
“Something better than it’s been up to now,” Joe said. “Organizing, writing songs, getting in the fight.”
Lund studied him so long that Joe raised the cup again to break the look. The missionary turned and mopped at the sink, threw the rag down and turned again and said with a little laugh, “The devil of it is, it’s probably admirable in a way.”
Now would come the sermon.
“What can a man say against it?” Lund said. “It comes straight out of the most generous of impulses, concern for the downtrodden. Nothing personal about it—no anger at particular people, nothing that you expect to get for yourself. Pure abstract philosophical devotion to principle. You get your face all chewed up out of unselfish sympathy for the working class. You’ll go out and eat black bread or none at all, starve and freeze and be in a dozen kinds of danger, all in the interest of economic justice.”
Joe watched him very closely. “Anything wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Lund said. “Not one solitary thing. Except the way you’ll think it has to be done.”
Still Joe watched him, trying to follow the kinks of the missionary’s Christian mind.
“It’s one part of humanity against another,” Lund said. His face was so serious it looked sad.
“It’s class against class, it’s a dedication to war …”
“Justice,” Joe said.
“Justice by way of war. You pledge yourself to violence, not as a last resort but as a deliberate policy.”
“Every other policy has been tried, and look where the working class still is.”
“Listen,” Lund said. “You Wobblies started this fight tonight, didn’t you?”
“No. But if we had, what of it? A scab won’t learn any other way.”
“That’s it,” Lund said, and spread his hands and blew up through his mustache. His mouth twitched; his eyes, almost whimsical now, were fixed on Joe’s.
“We used to have the church militant,” he said. “The church militant was just as bad as capitalism militant or unions militant. It’s the militancy I hate. It’s the way we choose up sides and bloody each other’s noses and shoot each other, every warring gang among us shouting about human rights and all of them trying to get them with brass knuckles or a gun. Wouldn’t it make more sense to work for some cause that pulled people together instead of had them flying at each other’s throats?”
“Yes?” Joe said. “What?”
Lund shrugged, a hopeless, humorous little twitch of the shoulders. “I don’t care what flag it marches under. But no class war. No crusades. No inquisition. No riots, no damnation threats, no hellfire. Something that probably sounds funny. Christian love. Human decency. The golden rule.”
Joe felt sorry for Lund. As long as he lived he would never know what the world was about. He would go on living with his head in a bag.
“The golden rule like the one the lumber trust or the S.P. follows?” he said.
He stood up, finding himself unexpectedly wobbly in the knees. “I’d better get along.”
“No, not yet,” Lund said. He had taken up the rag again and was sponging at the bloody collar of Joe’s coat, frowning down at his work with a concentrated, sober intentness. “You’re so deep into it already,” he said. “I wish you’d come in and talked to me.”
Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel Page 11
