by S. L. Stoner
He’d immediately removed his suit coat, noting that Cobb had left his own coat behind in the office. Between the heat outside beating down on the roof and the stinking steam that billowed from every piece of equipment, it felt like a steam bath, the thick air clinging to everything it touched. Overhead, two open skylights did nothing to relieve the heat. There were no exhaust fans.
Mae interrupted his recollections, saying, “At lunch Rachel Levy told us about the morning’s meeting with the bosses. She said the union’s dropped the wage increase demand. Now, they’re only asking for a nine-hour day. Cobb promised to give them the association’s answer tomorrow.” Defeat deadened her words.
“Jeez, I hate to hear that. How can those women possibly live on six dollars a week? Especially, those with kids and no working husband?” Sage hated that they’d dropped the wage demand but understood how fearful they’d be of striking. No one could build up savings when they earned only six dollars a week.
Mae was shaking her head. “I know, I know. Most are single mothers or single women without any outside support. I feel the same as you do but I kept my mouth shut. Just did what I’m supposed to do—‘observe, support and now, report’. Though, I surely did want to say something.”
Sage grinned, “I’ll just bet you did. No wonder you’ve had a hard day. Bet you nearly bit your tongue off keeping your opinion to yourself.”
This time she delivered a feeble blow to his shoulder. But it was a feeble blow. She really was tired. “Finish eating,” he said. “Then to bed. Are you going to work again tomorrow?”
His question kindled fire in her eyes and she snapped, “Well, really, Sage. Surely you know me well enough to know I don’t give up that easily!”
He grinned at her. “That’s more like it!” he said, artfully dodging the swift hand she shot in his direction.
Chapter Two
“You said you’d bring her three days ago! I can’t keep that room empty forever. I’m losing money on it!” The slack skin on her jowls quivered with feigned outrage even as her faded blue eyes glittered with calculation. She was trying to milk more money from him.
He made a show of studying the grimy kitchen—sending the message that this was the bottom of the barrel when it came to whorehouses. These days, she entertained few customers and those paid little for her wares. He leaned across the table to grab her wrist, squeezing and twisting until her hand darkened and she squealed from the pain.
“I’ve paid you all you’re going to get, so quit your whining,” he said before releasing her. She quickly dropped both hands beneath the table.
He sat back, sipped his whiskey and swallowed hard—watered rotgut. He hardened his face to keep the upper hand. People like her slithered their way around others, especially if they saw an opening. If caught, she’d act surprised and whine.
“So, is the room ready? Are the window boards nailed up? Is there a padlock on the outside? You’ve got the drops, right? And, you remember I said that she’s special? Not meant for your business?” he peppered her with questions, despite knowing the preparations had been in place for the last three days. She nodded silently, cowed by his sudden aggression. Not his style really, but a drunk like her wasn’t susceptible to civil persuasion. Fear’s what kept her in line.
“You’ll only have her for a few days,” he reminded her. “Just until I can get her shipped out. She’s going far away, so far that she won’t find her way back.”
The house madam nodded, continued to watch him warily and stayed silent. He knew she needed his money because she liked to party right along with her customers, plowing her piddling profits into drink instead of repairing her ramshackle house. Obviously, her business was on its last legs. All that was just fine for his purposes—just so long as she kept the door padlocked until he was ready to move the girl out. The house’s location was perfect, there on the fringes of the North End, near the river and amongst other similar houses squatting alongside the railroad tracks.
“Just how far away will she be going? I don’t like the thought of an American girl being sold to them slant-eyes over there in Shanghai, China,” she said.
Her objection gave him pause. He’d taken her for someone lacking any scruples. He shook his head. “Naw, she isn’t going to Shanghai. She’ll go from San Francisco to Panama. There’s going to be lots of single men down there digging on that canal now that the U.S. is taking it over.”
She frowned. Still, she suppressed whatever comment she might have made and instead asked, “How are you going to get her from Portland to Frisco?”
He raised a cautionary finger, narrowed his eyes and blanked his face. She swallowed, looked away at the peeling walls and then at the bottle between them, “So, how’s about another drink?” she mumbled as she pushed the bottle toward him.
Trailing Cobb and the other man was easy because they never looked back. Since he couldn’t get a job at the Sparta, Sage decided to learn what he could about its manager. Who knew? Maybe he’d stumble on one of Cobb’s secrets. Something he could use as leverage later on. The wealthy always had secrets. Sometimes they hid criminal secrets—more often, socially embarrassing ones. Either kind worked when it came to leverage.
In the past, they’d used those rich man’s secrets to further social justice. He didn’t always feel good about doing it, but his need to better lives was stronger than his reluctance to acquire another smudge on his conscience.
And, it was Cobb who needed investigating because his brain and resolve powered the Portland Laundryman’s Association. He’d founded it as soon as the city’s laundry workers joined the Shirt Waist and Laundry Workers’ Union. Cobb knew that the current dispute was critical because the outcome would establish work hours for every city laundry, not just the Sparta. Even the two laundries not in the association would adopt whatever terms the union won. They’d have no choice since laundry worker turnover was extremely high. And, no wonder. People quit the brutal job the minute they chanced upon a better situation.
So here he was, wearing his John Miner disguise. Looking like an itinerant workman as he trailed the two men. To his surprise they walked the fifteen blocks between the Sparta, at East Burnside and Water Avenue, and the United States Laundry on Grand and Salmon. Cobb strode with the ease of a well-conditioned athlete. Not so his companion who struggled to keep up. By the time they reached their destination, the pudgy fellow was mopping his brow with a big, white handkerchief.
The two men mounted the two steps and entered the wood frame building. Now, why do you suppose they’d visit one of the two laundries that had refused to join their association? Sage silently asked himself. He paused outside, before deciding he didn’t know enough to answer that question. After contemplating the closed door, he decided to chance it and take a stab at getting more information.
Usually his John Miner disguise, with its shabby clothes, battered hat and drooping mustache, worked well. Those who customarily saw him as John Adair, the urbane owner of Portland’s fancy restaurant, never considered that he might mingle with the “lower classes” crowding Portland’s streets.
He set his hat low and kept his face down as he slowly opened the door. Inside, he found an empty anteroom. No receptionist sat at the desk. Quietly shutting the door, he surveyed the room. Two doors opened off it. One door was wide with a steam-covered window in its top half. It obviously opened into the washroom area. The second door seemed to lead into a smaller office. Voices sounded from beyond that door. Cobb’s was one of those voices.
Wooden chairs, intended for waiting customers, sat against the wall beside the office door. He slid onto the chair nearest the door. Quietly he opened the folded newspaper in his pocket and raised it before his face, making sure it was right side up. Then he listened.
“Look Finley, your laundry is undercutting the bargaining position of every member of the association,” said Cobb.
An unknown voice, doubtless Finley’s, protested, “Look here Thaddeus. I’m doing what I thin
k is right. I haven’t recognized the union. I promised you I wouldn’t and I haven’t.”
“Don’t try to play stupid, James. You might not have signed an agreement but you are dancing to that damn union’s tune. It’s bad enough that they pushed through the ten-hour legislation last March. That cutback from eleven to ten hours cost us plenty.”
“Look,” Finley’s voice was entreating, “my girls, many of them have families. Ten hours, especially during the hot summer we’re having, is just too long to work in that steam. Since we’ve switched to nine-hour days, accidents have gone down. So has my turnover. And, the girls work faster.”
Another voice, this one angry, interrupted, “Of course your turnover has gone down. Hell, you probably have a waiting list of gals since you are undercutting the rest of us. Why would a girl work ten hours when she can get the same pay for nine?”
There was a scrape of chairs, signaling that Finley’s visitors were about to depart. Sage moved quickly down the row of chairs until he was sitting in the one farthest from the office, his nose buried in the newspaper.
Despite the increased distance, Cobb’s final words were perfectly audible. “Finley, I give you fair warning. The United States Laundry either joins the association and increases work hours back to ten, or you and your investors are going to be very, very sorry.”
“But Thaddeus, why can’t we just keep going as we are? I can’t hire any more girls away from you fellows. I have a full complement, right now.”
“Because,” Cobb said, his voice biting and cold. “We’re about to up the game and you need to be on our team. There’s no middle ground here, Finley. You try straddling the line and we’re going to plow you so deep into the dirt that you and this laundry will never crawl out.”
There was a scuff of shoes as Cobb and his companion exited the office. Without a glance in Sage’s direction, the two men were quickly out the door and on the sidewalk. Sage didn’t bother to follow.
No sound came from Finley’s office. After a beat, Sage walked to the office door. Inside, Finley sat, elbows on his desk, head propped in his hands. Then he sighed, straightened and reached for the black crank telephone on the wall beside him. As he did so, he saw Sage standing there, hat in hand.
“What do you want?” he demanded, his voice belligerent. Instantly, Finley seemed to regret his sharpness because he added, “Sorry to snap, Mister. But, if you need a job, we’re full up right now.”
Sage meekly ducked his head and said, “Thank you, sir. Maybe I’ll come back another day, just in case.”
“You do that. Good workers are always welcome when there’s an opening,” Finley responded with a smile.
After again dipping his head respectfully, Sage turned and left the office. Once on the wooden sidewalk, he paused to mull over Cobb’s last words. “We’re about to up the game.” What the heck did that mean?
Rachel entered the washroom a few minutes late. Her lips were a thin straight line. She shook her head as she made her way to her position at a mangle. Everyone’s eyes followed her as she crossed the wet floor. She was young, slender and nearing thirty, with dark curling hair pinned atop her head like all the others. While not beautiful, her strong, vivacious face was attractive. Even in what was clearly defeat, she projected a calm, kind, nature which was probably why the laundry workers had chosen her as their spokeswoman.
Like everyone else, Mae felt disappointed upon seeing that head shake. Her co-workers’ discouraged faces and slumping shoulders mirrored exactly what she felt. It didn’t matter that she’d only been working little more than a week in this steaming hell or that she didn’t have to work here at all. Her dismay might not be as sharp as the others’ but it still stabbed.
Sliding the hot iron carefully over lace flounces, Mae swore she felt her feet swelling within her soggy boots. On her other end, her eyes burned and her nose ran from the chemicals her iron steamed out. Setting down the iron, she gazed about, lifting one foot and then the other to gain some relief. Steam billowed upward from the washing and pressing machines. Water dripped from her raised boots. She could tell that, outside, the heat was rising to make it another scorching day. If there was a worst time to start working in a steam laundry, she’d sure like to know when.
She did all she could to be cooler like everyone else. Beneath her bib apron, her dress was unbuttoned and pulled loose from around her neck and she’d rolled her sleeves up above her elbows. Still, sweat ran down her back, under her arms, and off her forehead. Since everyone else was just as sweat stained, no one noticed.
Mae rubbed the small of her back and studied the new girl working at the shake table. There the women snapped and flattened the cloth taken from the water extractors. Shaking was the laundry’s starter job. It weeded out those who couldn’t tolerate heat, aching repetition or standing for ten hours a day. Her first three days, she’d worked at the shaking table. Her shoulders still remembered the fiery burning at that first day’s end. One of the women advised her to stoop her shoulders as she lifted and snapped the wet cloth loose. That had helped but little and seemed to leave her curled in a stoop after the day’s end. Her current job, ironing delicates, was easier.
Yup, she’d made it through those grueling first days and it looked like the new girl would too. She guessed the girl was about twenty-two. A smile accompanied her every word as did a twinkle in her deep brown eyes. As Mae watched, the girl shook out a piece of clothing, then held it up for the others to see, her mouth forming a dramatic “O” before she collapsed into laughter. It was a pair of men’s long johns that someone had decorated with appliquéd hearts—probably his wife. The other women joined in the young girl’s laughter.
Maybe those other women weren’t worried, but Mae clung to her suspicions. Certainly, the timing was one problem. Anyone hired once labor troubles began was suspect. Management always hired spies and troublemakers. So, who was this girl, really? She called herself, “Caroline Stark”. “I’m probably just chasing ghosts up the holler,” Mae chided herself before adding, “Still, something about her isn’t ringing true.”
Grabbing a new item to iron, a flat piece needing little attention, Mae continued to study the new girl. Caroline worked quickly and did her share. Yet, even from this distance Mae saw that the young woman’s pale hands were smooth. Nothing like the reddened claws of the other woman. Still, maybe this Caroline person was new to hard times. It wouldn’t be fair to call her a phony without some kind of proof.
Suspicion had become her second nature. Mae wasn’t proud of it but suspicious she was. She hadn’t been born into the world carrying that frame of mind. Sure, life in the Appalachian mine fields was hard but it was hard for everyone. That was just how things were. They, none of them, knew any different life.
No, her suspicious nature had been a treacherous husband’s parting gift to her character. “You deal straight and honest with friends and family and they’ll look after you,” is what her pa taught her.
Sage’s daddy, John Adair, Sr., had proved Mae’s pa wrong. In an ambush of her own husband’s making, both her father and brother were murdered. Greed and ambition turned him into a Judas who’d betrayed them to the mine owner’s thugs.
His vile act triggered a landslide of changes. She wanted to kill him, except the coward skedaddled before she caught him. Later she was grateful that he’d fled because she had her baby, John Sagacity . . . Sage, to bring up. Even when he was a babe, she’d called him, “Sage.” Never John or Johnny.
Nine years, she’d raised the boy. Together, she, her child and her remaining brother lived in a company shack while she worked in the mine’s sorting shed. And, at seven, Sage had joined her there, just as all the children did. No choice about that. It was how mining families made the rent and paid off their store debt. School was out of the question, leastways regular schooling. Still, she’d taught him to read at an early age, just like her pa had taught her.
Everything changed once again when methane in the mine exploded, k
illing a number of men, including her only brother and the mine owner’s son. By quirk of fate, Sage saved the mine owner’s grandson. A proud man of German heritage, the mine owner rewarded Sage by giving him a good home and education. She’d had no choice. She’d agreed to let him go and hadn’t seen her son again for nearly eighteen years.
Her eyes stung and watered until she had to pull a rag from her apron pocket to wipe them. To distract herself, she focused once again on the new girl. And then she saw it. Saw what had tweaked her suspicion all morning. Even as her hands snapped the wet cloth, Caroline’s deep brown eyes calmly assessed her surroundings but not with the wide-eyed curiosity of being in a strange, new place. When no one was looking, those brown eyes were too calculating—exactly like someone measuring a situation, looking for an advantage.
The lunch whistle interrupted Mae’s speculations. The mangles silenced, the steam stopped hissing and everyone trooped into the cooler air outside where they gathered beneath the shade of an ancient willow tree standing in the empty lot next door. Rachel stood with her back resting against the huge tree trunk. The other women sprawled on the ground around her, taking advantage of the shade offered by the tree’s hanging fronds. Mae pressed in close to hear Rachel speak about the morning’s negotiations.
Rachel didn’t horse around. She came right to the point, saying, “Cobb won’t respond to our settlement offer of a nine-hour day with no raise.”
Sharp cries burst from the group. One woman protested, “But, Cobb promised yesterday that he’d give the answer today!”
