Power by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

that regardless of what he thought, Clinton, West Virginia, was at this moment the focal point of interest for the entire country, and was likely to remain so for some time to come. He might not give one damn for a reporter, but at least a part of the ultimate fate of the coal miners in Hogan County would depend on what reporters told of their fight.
    Finally, he asked me, “Where do you want to go, mister?”
    â€œFenwick Crag—the McGrady place.”
    He thought this over for a while, and then he nodded. “Cost you five dollars.”
    I took out my wallet and paid him, and he said that he would be ready for me in half an hour. Then I went back to the hotel, paid my bill, packed my suitcase, and put in a call to New York. When I told Oscar Smith that I was checking out of the hotel and leaving Clinton, I thought he would explode. “Of all the damnfool, idiot notions!” he screamed at me. “There you are, by pure accident at the heart of the biggest story in the country, and you talk about pulling out! Either stay there or you’re out of a job!”
    â€œYou sent me down here to cover a war, didn’t you?”
    â€œForget that nonsense and stay where you are!”
    â€œNo, sir,” I replied, politely but firmly. “I think there is going to be a war after all. Everyone else will be here on the home front. I intend to be with the enemy forces.”
    I explained all that I dared to explain. As far as I knew, someone might be listening in downstairs, and I didn’t want any trouble. At least he began to see my way of thinking, and if I got no blessing, at least I got a warning to file material and not to think that I could turn into a bum on his money.
    I went downstairs to the lobby then. It was crowded, as it had been since the evening before, and at one side of it, on a couch and a few chairs, half a dozen women were sitting. A few were women; the rest were just kids, and they were all dressed badly and cheaply, their faces covered with heavy, raw make-up. The operatives in the lobby were around them, loud and clever and making a big thing out of them. Bill Goodman of the Times , who had checked in early in the morning, spotted me and my suitcase and wanted to know where I was going.
    â€œOut,” I said. “I had enough of Clinton.”
    He didn’t believe me, and kept pushing for some information. In turn, he described the extent of the operation here. According to him, there were some five hundred hired detectives, for want of a better name, in town already, and more coming. The batch of girls had just come in from Charleston, and they were the first of a large order necessary to keep the men satisfied. “They’re doing it the French way,” he said. “My word, I never seen anything like this before. They got an army occupying this town. What for? What are they up to? I heard of strikes and labor trouble, but so help me God, I never heard of anything like this before!”
    â€œThey just don’t want a union here,” I replied.
    â€œThat’s an understatement if I ever heard one. Where are you going?”
    â€œJust around. I want to look at the pits and see what’s happening.”
    â€œWith your suitcase?”
    â€œYou never know where you’ll end up.”
    â€œIt’s damn funny,” he said, “that you got here yesterday before anyone ever knew that there was a place called Clinton on the map.”
    â€œIt’s one of those things,” I shrugged, and pushed my way through and outside. The car was in front of the hotel, the motor running, a battered specimen of a Maxwell, I think, and some of the operatives were examining it and trying to rile the boy in the driver’s seat. He was nervous, for which I hardly blamed him. He was a lone native in a town whose population had melted away, and a good many of these operatives or detectives appeared to have only remote kinship with the human