Clarkton by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

the radio and said:
    â€œIt’s awful late to bother you folks, Ruth, but this is going to be a bother, even if all the storekeepers are full of love for the strikers and the police are like silk and honey, which is a lot of malarkey, if you ask me—and there I disagree with Sawyer here who says the essential nature of this strike is different. Like hell it’s different!”
    He looked at Sawyer, who, somewhat abashed, said, “OK, suppose we argue later. Tell the story.”
    â€œAll right. Sawyer here came into town for a meeting tonight. Just a routine thing with the trade union people, and it didn’t have to be anything else but routine because everything is going all right. But he’s new in the district, and it’s a wise thing to get around and keep in touch with things. Also, they got four tons of canned goods in a public collection in Worcester, and we had to arrange a way to get a truck over there and bring back the stuff, also in a way so that nobody would have any doubts who arranged it—because I feel if we can’t get credit at least for that, we should go put our faces in the mud and leave them there. Also, we had a special meeting of the strike committee this afternoon, and they’re so dizzy with success, the way they tied up the plant, they should stand on gyroscopes not on the ground. After the meeting, I walked over to case the picket line at the First Avenue gate with Joey Raye—”; he explained to Abbott, “You know him, I think, Doc. He’s a big, heavy-set Negro, who works in the service department, and a very good guy. He set up the whole soup kitchen outfit, and he’s the kind of a guy people don’t think about a lot, doesn’t talk too good, but damn solid underneath. Well, we’re standing there when a car drives up with a pass and the picket captain lets it through, no trouble or nothing. But there are two guys in back of the car, and Joey Raye recognizes one of them and tells me it’s Hamilton Gelb. Does that ring a bell?”
    Watching Ruth Abbott, Sawyer noticed the amazing change that took place when she smiled. Ryan couldn’t talk and stand still at the same time; three sentences were out and he was all over the room, and that was when Ruth Abbott began to grin. She wasn’t laughing at him, merely enjoying the quality of the little man, and suddenly she was alive and alert—and curiously enough, to Sawyer, she was a woman for the first time, breasts and thighs and legs, and a placid serenity underneath that would not be disturbed. Looking from her to her husband, Sawyer wondered where was the strength and what was the relationship.
    â€œWhat kind of a bell?” she asked.
    â€œA nice rich-toned bell. Go back to ’thirty-six, ’thirty-seven, ’thirty-eight.”
    â€œI was in Spain,” she said, glancing at her husband. “Anyway, I don’t have a good memory for names. That keeps me out of politics. It sounds familiar …”
    â€œAll right, I’ll give you Citizen Gelb’s history, quick. He broke the strike at Rahway Mines in ’thirty-six. He dreamed up and managed the Commonwealth Steel massacre. He was going to take over with a unified plan for Auto, but the CIO got there first. So he went out to California and managed the big deal for the fruit growers in ’thirty-eight. Then he did six or seven smaller jobs, and altogether he’s got a big name. He’s the real big-time. Where he was during the war, I don’t know. It wasn’t only him, but Stevens and Alec Cornwall and Von Sturmer all dropped out of sight. But what in hell is he doing here? This ain’t his kind of a job and it ain’t his kind of an industry.”
    â€œI think you’re making a large-sized mountain out of a molehill,” the doctor said.
    â€œAnd sometimes that doesn’t hurt,” Ruth said. “I think the coffee’s all right. Do you want to