________________________________________________
_ A gleam of light came, when Billy got a job driving a grading
team for the contractors of the big bridge then building at
Niles. Before he went he made certain that it was a union job.
And a union job it was for two days, when the concrete workers
threw down their tools. The contractors, evidently prepared for
such happening, immediately filled the places of the concrete men
with nonunion Italians. Whereupon the carpenters, structural
ironworkers and teamsters walked out; and Billy, lacking train
fare, spent the rest of the day in walking home.
"I couldn't work as a scab," he concluded his tale.
"No," Saxon said; "you couldn't work as a scab."
But she wondered why it was that when men wanted to work, and
there was work to do, yet they were unable to work because their
unions said no. Why were there unions? And, if unions had to be,
why were not all workingmen in them? Then there would be no
scabs, and Billy could work every day. Also, she wondered where
she was to get a sack of flour, for she had long since ceased the
extravagance of baker's bread. And so many other of the
neighborhood women had done this, that the little Welsh baker had
closed up shop and gone away, taking his wife and two little
daughters with him. Look where she would, everybody was being
hurt by the industrial strife.
One afternoon came a caller at her door, and that evening came
Billy with dubious news. He had been approached that day. All he
had to do, he told Saxon, was to say the word, and he could go
into the stable as foreman at one hundred dollars a month.
The nearness of such a sum, the possibility of it, was almost
stunning to Saxon, sitting at a supper which consisted of boiled
potatoes, warmed-over beans, and a small dry onion which they
were eating raw. There was neither bread, coffee, nor butter. The
onion Billy had pulled from his pocket, having picked it up in
the street. One hundred dollars a month! She moistened her lips
and fought for control.
"What made them offer it to you?" she questioned.
"That's easy," was his answer. "They got a dozen reasons. The guy
the boss has had exercisin' Prince and King is a dub. King has
gone lame in the shoulders. Then they're guessin' pretty strong
that I'm the party that's put a lot of their scabs outa
commission. Macklin's ben their foreman for years an' years--why
I was in knee pants when he was foreman. Well, he's sick an' all
in. They gotta have somebody to take his place. Then, too, I've
been with 'em a long time. An' on top of that, I'm the man for
the job. They know I know horses from the ground up. Hell, it's
all I'm good for, except sluggin'."
"Think of it, Billy!" she broathed. "A hundred dollars a month! A
hundred dollars a month!"
"An' throw the fellows down," he said.
It was not a question. Nor was it a statement. It was anything
Saxon chose to make of it. They looked at each other. She waited
for him to speak; but he continued merely to look. It came to her
that she was facing one of the decisive moments of her life, and
she gripped herself to face it in all coolness. Nor would Billy
proffer her the slightest help. Whatever his own judgment might
be, he masked it with an expressionless face. His eyes betrayed
nothing. He looked and waited.
"You ... you can't do that, Billy," she said finally. "You can't
throw the fellows down."
His hand shot out to hers, and his face was a sudden, radiant
dawn.
"Put her there!" he cried, their hands meeting and clasping.
"You're the truest true blue wife a man ever had. If all the
other fellows' wives was like you, we could win any strike we
tackled."
"What would you have done if you weren't married, Billy?"
"Seen 'em in hell first."
"Than it doesn't make any difference being married. I've got to
stand by you in everything you stand for. I'd be a nice wife if I
didn't."
She remembered her caller of the afternoon, and knew the moment
was too propitious to let pass.
"There was a man here this afternoon, Billy. He wanted a room. I
told him I'd speak to you. He said he would pay six dollars a
month for the back bedroom. That would pay half a month's
installment on the furniture and buy a sack of flour, and we're
all out of flour."
Billy's old hostility to the idea was instantly uppermost, and
Saxon watched him anxiously.
"Some scab in the shops, I suppose?"
"No; he's firing on the freight run to San Jose. Harmon, he said
his name was, James Harmon. They've just transferred him from the
Truckee division. He'll sleep days mostly, he said; and that's
why he wanted a quiet house without children in it."
In the end, with much misgiving, and only after Saxon had
insistently pointed out how little work it entailed on her, Billy
consented, though he continued to protest, as an afterthought
"But I don't want you makin' beds for any man. It ain't right,
Saxon. I oughta take care of you."
"And you would," she flashed back at him, "if you'd take the
foremanship. Only you can't. It wouldn't be right. And if I'm to
stand by you it's only fair to let me do what I can."
James Harmon proved even less a bother than Saxon had
anticipated. For a fireman he was scrupulously clean, always
washing up in the roundhouse before he came home. He used the key
to the kitchen door, coming and going by the back steps. To Saxon
he barely said how-do-you-do or good day; and, sleeping in the
day time and working at night, he was in the house a week before
Billy laid eyes on him.
Billy had taken to coming home later and later, and to going out
after supper by himself. He did not offer to tell Saxon where he
went. Nor did she ask. For that matter it required little
shrewdness on her part to guess. The fumes of whisky were on his
lips at such times. His slow, deliberate ways were even slower,
even more deliberate. Liquor did not affect his legs. He walked
as soberly as any man. There was no hesitancy, no faltering, in
his muscular movements. The whisky went to his brain, making his
eyes heavy-lidded and the cloudiness of them more cloudy. Not
that he was flighty, nor quick, nor irritable. On the contrary,
the liquor imparted to his mental processes a deep gravity and
brooding solemnity. He talked little, but that little was ominous
and oracular. At such times there was no appeal from his
judgment, no discussion. He knew, as God knew. And when he chose
to speak a harsh thought, it was ten-fold harsher than
ordinarily, because it seemed to proceed out of such profundity
of cogitation, because it was as prodigiously deliberate in its
incubation as it was in its enunciation.
It was not a nice side he was showing to Saxon. It was, almost,
as if a stranger had come to live with her. Despite herself, she
found herself beginning to shrink from him. And little could she
comfort herself with the thought that it was not his real self,
for she remembered his gentleness and considerateness, all his
finenesses of the past. Then he had made a continual effort to
avoid trouble and fighting. Now he enjoyed it, exulted in it,
went looking for it. All this showed in his face. No longer was
he the smiling, pleasant-faced boy. He smiled infrequently now.
His face was a man's face. The lips, the eyes, the lines were
harsh as his thoughts were harsh.
He was rarely unkind to Saxon; but, on the other hand he was
rarely kind. His attitude toward her was growing negative. He was
disinterested. Despite the fight for the union she was enduring
with him, putting up with him shoulder to shoulder, she occupied
but little space in his mind. When he acted toward her gently,
she could see that it was merely mechanical, just as she was well
aware that the endearing terms he used, the endearing caresses he
gave, were only habitual. The spontaneity and warmth had gone
out. Often, when he was not in liquor, flashes of the old Billy
came back, but even such flashes dwindled in frequency. He was
growing preoccupied, moody. Hard times and the bitter stresses of
industrial conflict strained him. Especially was this apparent in
his sleep, when he suffered paroxysms of lawless dreams, groaning
and muttering, clenching his fists, grinding his teeth, twisting
with muscular tensions, his face writhing with passions and
violences, his throat guttering with terrible curses that rasped
and aborted on his lips. And Saxon, lying beside him, afraid of
this visitor to her bed whom she did not know, remembered what
Mary had told her of Bert. He, too, had cursed and clenched his
fists, in his nights fought out the battles of his days.
One thing, however, Saxon saw clearly. By no deliberate act of
Billy's was he becoming this other and unlovely Billy. Were there
no strike, no snarling and wrangling over jobs, there would be
only the old Billy she had loved in all absoluteness. This
sleeping terror in him would have lain asleep. It was something
that was being awakened in him, an image incarnate of outward
conditions, as cruel, as ugly, as maleficent as were those
outward conditions. But if the strike continued, then, she
feared, with reason, would this other and grisly self of Billy
strengthen to fuller and more forbidding stature. And this, she
knew, would mean the wreck of their love-life. Such a Billy she
could not love; in its nature such a Billy was not lovable nor
capable of love. And then, at the thought of offspring, she
shuddered. It was too terrible. And at such moments of
contemplation, from her soul the inevitable plaint of the human
went up: WHY? WHY? WHY?
Billy, too, had his unanswerable queries.
"Why won't the building trades come out?" he demanded wrathfuly
of the obscurity that veiled the ways of living and the world.
"But no; O'Brien won't stand for a strike, and he has the
Building Trades Council under his thumb. But why don't they chuck
him and come out anyway? We'd win hands down all along the line.
But no, O'Brien's got their goat, an' him up to his dirty neck in
politics an' graft! An' damn the Federation of Labor! If all the
railroad boys had come out, wouldn't the shop men have won
instead of bein' licked to a frazzle? Lord, I ain't had a smoke
of decent tobacco or a cup of decent coffee in a coon's age. I've
forgotten what a square meal tastes like. I weighed myself
yesterday. Fifteen pounds lighter than when the strike begun. If
it keeps on much more I can fight middleweight. An' this is what
I get after payin' dues into the union for years and years. I
can't get a square meal, an' my wife has to make other men's
beds. It makes my tired ache. Some day I'll get real huffy an'
chuck that lodger out."
"But it's not his fault, Billy," Saxon protested.
"Who said it was?" Billy snapped roughly. "Can't I kick in
general if I want to? Just the same it makes me sick. What's the
good of organized labor if it don't stand together? For two cents
I'd chuck the whole thing up an' go over to the employers. Only I
wouldn't, God damn them! If they think they can beat us down to
our knees, let'em go ahead an' try it, that's all. But it gets me
just the same. The whole world's clean dippy. They ain't no sense
in anything. What's the good of supportin' a union that can't win
a strike? What's the good of knockin' the blocks off of scabs
when they keep a-comin' thick as ever? The whole thing's
bughouse, an' I guess I am, too."
Such an outburst on Billy's part was so unusual that it was the
only time Saxon knew it to occur. Always he was sullen, and
dogged, and unwhipped; while whisky only served to set the
maggots of certitude crawling in his brain.
One night Billy did not get home till after twelve. Saxon's
anxiety was increased by the fact that police fighting and head
breaking had been reported to have occurred. When Billy came, his
appearance verified the report. His coatsleeves were half torn
off. The Windsor tie had disappeared from under his soft
turned-down collar, and every button had been ripped off the
front of the shirt. When he took his hat off, Saxon was
frightened by a lump on his head the size of an apple.
"D'ye know who did that? That Dutch slob Hermanmann, with a riot
club. An' I'll get'm for it some day, good an' plenty. An'
there's another fellow I got staked out that'll be my meat when
this strike's over an' things is settled down. Blanchard's his
name, Roy Blanchard."
"Not of Blanchard, Perkins and Company?" Saxon asked, busy
washing Billy's hurt and making her usual fight to keep him calm.
"Yep; except he's the son of the old man. What's he do, that
ain't done a tap of work in all his life except to blow the old
man's money? He goes strike-breakin'. Grandstand play, that's
what I call it. Gets his name in the papers an makes all the
skirts he runs with fluster up an' say: 'My! Some bear, that Roy
Blanchard, some bear.' Some bear--the gazabo! He'll be bear-meat
for me some day. I never itched so hard to lick a man in my life.
"And--oh, I guess I'll pass that Dutch cop up. He got his
already. Somebody broke his head with a lump of coal the size of
a water bucket. That was when the wagons was turnin' into
Franklin, just off Eighth, by the old Galindo Hotel. They was
hard fightin' there, an' some guy in the hotel lams that coal
down from the second story window.
"They was fightin' every block of the way--bricks, cobblestones,
an' police-clubs to beat the band. They don't dast call out the
troops. An' they was afraid to shoot. Why, we tore holes through
the police force, an' the ambulanees and patrol wagons worked
over-time. But say, we got the procession blocked at Fourteenth
and Broadway, right under the nose of the City Hall, rushed the
rear end, cut out the horses of five wagons, an' handed them
college guys a few love-pats in passin'. All that saved 'em from
hospital was the police reserves. Just the same we had 'em jammed
an hour there. You oughta seen the street cars blocked,
too--Broadway, Fourteenth, San Pablo, as far as you could see."
"But what did Blanchard do?" Saxon called him back.
"He led the procession, an' he drove my team. All the teams was
from my stable. He rounded up a lot of them college
fellows--fraternity guys, they're called--yaps that live off
their fathers' money. They come to the stable in big tourin' cars
an' drove out the wagons with half the police of Oakland to help
them. Say, it was sure some day. The sky rained cobblestones. An'
you oughta heard the clubs on our heads--rat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat! An' say, the chief of police, in a police auto,
sittin' up like God Almighty--just before we got to Peralta
street they was a block an' the police chargin', an' an old
woman, right from her front gate, lammed the chief of police full
in the face with a dead cat. Phew! You could hear it. 'Arrest
that woman!' he yells, with his handkerchief out. But the boys
beat the cops to her an' got her away. Some day? I guess yes. The
receivin' hospital went outa commission on the jump, an' the
overflow was spilled into St. Mary's Hospital, an' Fabiola, an' I
don't know where else. Eight of our men was pulled, an' a dozen
of the Frisco teamsters that's come over to help. They're holy
terrors, them Frisco teamsters. It seemed half the workingmen of
Oakland was helpin' us, an' they must be an army of them in jail.
Our lawyers'll have to take their cases, too.
"But take it from me, it's the last we'll see of Roy Blanchard
an' yaps of his kidney buttin' into our affairs. I guess we
showed 'em some football. You know that brick buildin' they're
puttin' up on Bay street? That's where we loaded up first, an',
say, you couldn't see the wagon-seats for bricks when they
started from the stables. Blanchard drove the first wagon, an' he
was knocked clean off the seat once, but he stayed with it."
"He must have been brave," Saxon commented.
"Brave?" Billy flared. "With the police, an' the army an' navy
behind him? I suppose you'll be takin' their part next. Brave?
A-takin' the food outa the mouths of our women an children.
Didn't Curley Jones's little kid die last night? Mother's milk
not nourishin', that's what it was, because she didn't have the
right stuff to eat. An' I know, an' you know, a dozen old aunts,
an' sister-in-laws, an' such, that's had to hike to the poorhouse
because their folks couldn't take care of 'em in these times."
In the morning paper Saxon read the exciting account of the
futile attempt to break the teamsters' strike. Roy Blanchard was
hailed a hero and held up as a model of wealthy citizenship. And
to save herself she could not help glowing with appreciation of
his courage. There was something fine in his going out to face
the snarling pack. A brigadier general of the regular army was
quoted as lamenting the fact that the troops had not been called
out to take the mob by the throat and shake law and order into
it. "This is the time for a little healthful bloodletting," was
the conclusion of his remarks, after deploring the pacific
methods of the police. "For not until the mob has been thoroughly
beaten and cowed will tranquil industrial conditions obtain."
That evening Saxon and Billy went up town. Returning home and
finding nothing to eat, he had taken her on one arm, his overcoat
on the other. The overcoat he had pawned at Uncle Sam's, and he
and Saxon had eaten drearily at a Japanese restaurant which in
some miraculous way managed to set a semi-satisfying meal for ten
cents. After eating, they started on their way to spend an
additional five cents each on a moving picture show.
At the Central Bank Building, two striking teamsters accosted
Billy and took him away with them. Saxon waited on the corner,
and when he returned, three quarters of an hour later, she knew
he had been drinking.
Half a block on, passing the Forum Cafe, he stopped suddenly. A
limousine stood at the curb, and into it a young man was helping
several wonderfully gowned women. A chauffeur sat in the driver's
sent. Billy touched the young man on the arm. He was as
broad-shouldered as Billy and slightly taller. Blue-eyed,
strong-featured, in Saxon's opinion he was undeniably handsome.
"Just a word, sport," Billy said, in a low, slow voice.
The young man glanced quickly at Billy and Saxon, and asked
impatiently:
"Well, what is it?"
"You're Blanchard," Billy began. "I seen you yesterday lead out
that bunch of teams."
"Didn't I do it all right?" Blanchard asked gaily, with a flash
of glance to Saxon and back again.
"Sure. But that ain't what I want to talk about."
"Who are you?" the other demanded with sudden suspicion.
"A striker. It just happens you drove my team, that's all. No;
don't move for a gun." (As Blanchard half reached toward his hip
pocket.) "I ain't startin' anythin' here. But I just want to tell
you something."
"Be quick, then."
Blanchard lifted one foot to step into the machine.
"Sure," Billy went on without any diminution of his exasperating
slowness. "What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not
now, when the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get
you an' give you the beatin' of your life."
Blanchard looked Billy over with new interest and measuring eyes
that sparkled with appreciation.
"You are a husky yourself," he said. "But do you think you can do
it?"
"Sure. You're my meat."
"All right, then, my friend. Look me up after the strike is
settled, and I'll give you a chance at me."
"Remember," Billy added, "I got you staked out."
Blanchard nodded, smiled genially to both of them, raised his hat
to Saxon, and stepped into the machine. _
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