Part 28 (2/2)
And if you won't fight, I won't work--there. And more, I'll never do anything you don't want me to, Billy.”
”Same here,” Billy agreed. ”Though just the same I'd like most to death to have just one go at that squarehead Hansen.” He smiled with pleasure at the thought. ”Say, let's forget it all now, an' you sing me 'Harvest Days' on that d.i.n.ky what-you-may-call-it.”
When she had complied, accompanying herself on the ukulele, she suggested his weird ”Cowboy's Lament.” In some inexplicable way of love, she had come to like her husband's one song. Because he sang it, she liked its inanity and monotonousness; and most of all, it seemed to her, she loved his hopeless and adorable flatting of every note. She could even sing with him, flatting as accurately and deliciously as he. Nor did she undeceive him in his sublime faith.
”I guess Bert an' the rest have joshed me all the time,” he said.
”You and I get along together with it fine,” she equivocated; for in such matters she did not deem the untruth a wrong.
Spring was on when the strike came in the railroad shops. The Sunday before it was called, Saxon and Billy had dinner at Bert's house.
Saxon's brother came, though he had found it impossible to bring Sarah, who refused to budge from her household rut. Bert was blackly pessimistic, and they found him singing with sardonic glee:
”n.o.body loves a mil-yun-aire. n.o.body likes his looks. n.o.body'll share his slightest care, He cla.s.ses with thugs and crooks. Thriftiness has become a crime, So spend everything you earn; We're living now in a funny time, When money is made to burn.”
Mary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable signals of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying on an ap.r.o.n, washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher of steaming beer from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked and talked about the coming strike.
”It oughta come years ago,” was Bert's dictum. ”It can't come any too quick now to suit me, but it's too late. We're beaten thumbs down.
Here's where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the neck, ker-whop!”
”Oh, I don't know,” Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely, began to counsel. ”Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day. Why, I can remember when there wasn't any unions in California. Look at us now--wages, an' hours, an' everything.”
”You talk like an organizer,” Bert sneered, ”shovin' the bull con on the boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won't buy as much now as unorganized wages used to buy. They've got us whipsawed. Look at Frisco, the labor leaders doin' dirtier politics than the old parties, pawin' an' squabblin' over graft, an' goin' to San Quentin, while--what are the Frisco carpenters doin'? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown, if you listen to all you hear you'll hear that every Frisco carpenter is union an' gettin' full union wages. Do you believe it? It's a d.a.m.n lie.
There ain't a carpenter that don't rebate his wages Sat.u.r.day night to the contractor. An' that's your buildin' trades in San Francisco, while the leaders are makin' trips to Europe on the earnings of the tenderloin--when they ain't coughing it up to the lawyers to get out of wearin' stripes.”
”That's all right,” Tom concurred. ”n.o.body's denyin' it. The trouble is labor ain't quite got its eyes open. It ought to play politics, but the politics ought to be the right kind.”
”Socialism, eh?” Bert caught him up with scorn. ”Wouldn't they sell us out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?”
”Get men that are honest,” Billy said. ”That's the whole trouble. Not that I stand for socialism. I don't. All our folks was a long time in America, an' I for one won't stand for a lot of fat Germans an' greasy Russian Jews tellin' me how to run my country when they can't speak English yet.”
”Your country!” Bert cried. ”Why, you bonehead, you ain't got a country.
That's a fairy story the grafters shove at you every time they want to rob you some more.”
”But don't vote for the grafters,” Billy contended. ”If we selected honest men we'd get honest treatment.”
”I wish you'd come to some of our meetings, Billy,” Tom said wistfully.
”If you would, you'd get your eyes open an' vote the socialist ticket next election.”
”Not on your life,” Billy declined. ”When you catch me in a socialist meeting'll be when they can talk like white men.”
Bert was humming:
”We're living now in a funny time, When money is made to burn.”
Mary was too angry with her husband, because of the impending strike and his incendiary utterances, to hold conversation with Saxon, and the latter, bepuzzled, listened to the conflicting opinions of the men.
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