Sometimes a Great Notion (62 page)

“A picket! I’m sayin’ we throw a picket around their mill. We shoulda done it a week ago, but I wanted to wait till you got here.”

“What do we list as our complaint?” Draeger asked. “Legally, we aren’t able—”

“Legal be damned!” Evenwrite erupted uncontrollably—not nearly as uncontrollably as his tone indicated but, by godfrey, it’s time to get off the pot! “Legal be screwed!” Draeger seemed mildly surprised by the outburst and held his flaming match motionless above the bowl of his pipe. “I mean, Jonathan—we got to get back to work!”

“Yes, of course . . .”

“An’ we got to do something about it.”

“Perhaps . . .” Draeger frowned slightly as he sucked the pipe to life. “At any rate, do you have men willing to stand all day out in this weather?”

“Shoot, yes! Les! Arthur, what about you? The Sitkins boys, they ain’t here but I’ll guarantee that they’ll stand. And me.”

“Before you jump into this wet—and illegal—ordeal, I would like to make a suggestion, if I might.”

“Jesus Christ—!” Like I ain’t been waiting a week for you to do something to earn your salary. “Sure we’d like to hear a suggestion.”

“Why don’t we talk things over with Mr. Stamper first? Maybe save a lot of walking around in the rain.”

“
Talk
things over? With Hank Stamper? You saw last night how the Stampers talk things over, like goddam savages. . . .”

“I saw last night a man finally provoked into teaching a bully a lesson; what he did didn’t strike me as being particularly unreasonable. . . .”

“Unreasonable is a word Hank Stamper was toothed on, Jonathan; talkin’ with him is like talkin’ to a signpost . . . didn’t I go to him first off I got that first report? And I get what kind of reasoning? Dynamite throwed at me.”

“Still, I think I would like to take a little ride up and ask the man if he wouldn’t reconsider his position. You and I, Floyd . . .”

“You and
me?
I’m damned if I’ll go up to that place tonight.”

“Come on, Floyd; the boys will think you’re afraid to be out after dark....”

“Jonathan . . . you don’t know. He lives on the other side of the river, for one thing, an’ no road in.”

“Isn’t there a boat we might rent?” Draeger asked the room in general.

“There’s Mama Olson,” Teddy answered quickly and avoided Evenwrite’s dark look. “Mama Olson, down at the cannery, sir, she’ll rent you a motor rig.”

“But it’s
raining
out there,” Evenwrite wailed.

“She’ll rent you rain gear too,” Teddy added, a little astonished by his own outspoken suggestions. He came gliding out from behind the bar to trip the lever in back of the pay phone. He held out the dial-toning receiver, smiling passively. “You can call her from here.”

He watched Draeger nod a polite thank you and rise from his chair. He handed him the phone, almost bowing as he did.
Yes. I do not understand why yet. But I know that this Mr. Draeger is no ordinary man. He is decidedly intelligent, and sensitive to a high degree, I am sure. And he may even be fearless, too.
Teddy stepped back from the phone and stood, his little hands beneath his apron, watching the way all the others waited in respectful silence while Draeger got Mama Olson’s number from the operator and placed his call, like dogs waiting in mute and unquestioning obedience for the master’s next move.
But he is also something more; yes, something wonderfully special . . .

 

And it was beginning to look to Evenwrite as though the hero he had so long awaited to come smooth out this Stamper hassle was turning out to be as big a hang-up as the hassle he had come to smooth.

He and Draeger were putting doggedly up the river in a boat that looked none too sound, with an outboard motor that looked even less reliable. The rain had let up and leveled out to its usual winter-long pace . . . not so much a rain as a dreamy smear of blue-gray that wipes over the land instead of falling on it, making patient spectral shades of the tree trunks and a pathic, placid, and cordial sighing sound all along the broad river. A friendly sound, even. It was nothing fearful after all. The same old rain, and, if not welcomed, at least accepted—an old gray aunt who came to visit every winter and stayed till spring. You learn to live with her. You learn to reconcile yourself to the little inconveniences and not get annoyed. You remember she is seldom angry or vicious and nothing to get in a stew about, and if she is a bore and stays overlong you can train yourself not to notice her, or at least not to stew about her.

Which was what Evenwrite attempted to do as he and Draeger rode up river in the open launch they had rented from Mama Olson. He succeeded in ignoring the actual raindrops and was partially successful in his attempt to keep from stewing about the damp wind, but try as he might, he couldn’t overlook the stream pouring down his neck and into his pants. They had been better than an hour coming from the moorage at Mama Olson’s dock at the cannery to the Stamper house, twice as long as it should have taken because he hadn’t thought to check the tides and catch an up-river flow.

Evenwrite hunched near the motor in chilled silence; at first he had been angry with Draeger, who had suggested paying Mr. Stamper this senseless social call; he then became furious with himself, not only for forgetting to check the tides but for insisting to Draeger that they go up in a rented boat instead of driving up and honking for Stamper to come across and get them at the garage. (“He might not come across to pick us up when we get there,” he had told Draeger when the man had asked about driving to the Stamper house, “an’ even if he
does
, the bastard might not take us
back
across”—knowing better, knowing Hank would have greatly enjoyed this sort of chance to be neighborly and helpful, would probably have been just nice as pie, the sonofabitch!)—and, finally, he had become absolutely
enraged
with Mama Olson for loaning him a poncho that was so frigging full of holes it practically drowned him and ruined his goddam pack of cigarettes. (But by god if you ever catch Floyd Evenwrite begging for anything, be it smokes, matches, or that plastic tarp he’s sitting on and me soaked to the goddam skin!)

Draeger sat barely visible in the twisting dark in the bow of the boat with his pipe bowl turned upside down against the rain, saying nothing to make the trip any more enjoyable. (In fact, the
son
ofa
bitch never
has anything to say! other’n “Let’s talk things over.” And I’m getting tired of that.) How Draeger had risen to the top in the labor business was something Evenwrite found increasingly hard to comprehend. There seemed to be nothing to him but front. He hadn’t done a goddam thing about the strike in the whole time he’d been in town, after being a week late to boot—just walked around nodding and grinning like a nincompoop. (Except—it’s funny—except all the time he’s taking
notes in that little book.
) He hadn’t asked a thing about the minutes of the walk-out meeting (but funny thing is
you feel he’s already got it wrote down
) or about the morale of the members after a long strike, or the dwindling strike funds, or any of the stuff Evenwrite had been prepared to answer. (Like he thinks he
knows so goddam much
he don’t have to stoop to ask question
of dumb-asses like us!
) One thing, though, that Evenwrite had to give him credit for (now he might think
just because of
some goddam
college-degree friend in Washington or something
that he can come around here
expecting us to kiss his feet
. . .) and that was the man’s impressive and calm way of handling the members, (. . . but he’ll see he’s got
another think coming
). Also Floyd had to admire the way he kept them in line, the way he kept them aware that he was the man at the controls (I’ll have to learn how to bring that off ) and that they were just the rank and file (
that’s only way
to command
any kind of respect
and
get any kind of discipline
outa the bunch of knot-heads).

So Evenwrite fumed and fretted, worshiped and hated all the silent trip up the river, and wished Draeger would say something so he could grunt just enough answer to show that Floyd Evenwrite didn’t give a good goddam for him, he didn’t care if he was president of the whole United States!

The window lights of the house came into view. “Balls,” Evenwrite said finally, without being asked, making the word a general, all-encompassing denouncement. He swallowed hard: he was cold, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting, and he was longing so for a cigarette that the smoke from Draeger’s pipe was bringing tears to his eyes.

They tied the launch to the marker at the dock and stepped out into a smothering dark that reminded him of the flashlight left lying in the front seat of his car. “Balls again,” Evenwrite said, more softly. Draeger wondered if they shouldn’t call to the house for a lantern but Evenwrite vetoed the idea: “You don’t catch me asking for a lantern” and added in a terse whisper, “They probably wouldn’t bring one out anyway.”

With the running lights of the boat extinguished, and the kitchen window cut off behind the thick vine hedge, the darkness was terrible. Each match they tried hissed out immediately, as though pinched by invisible wet fingers; they gave up all hope of light and began shuffling blind along the slippery, slopping planks, hearing the river inches away in the night. Evenwrite led the way inch by inch, feeling ahead with his feet, both arms extended well in front of him. They both remained perfectly silent, as though coerced by the shushing of the rain, until Evenwrite ran his forehead into a piling pole; it was so inconceivable to him that any innocent object of the night could get past his double straight-arm guard that he thought someone lying in ambush had clubbed him. “Dirty bastard!” he cried, throwing both arms about his mysterious assailant. Who was clothed in a garment of cold, wet slime and barnacle shells. “Oh!” he cried again a bit too loud, and from beneath the house came a black boiling of frenzied beasts, roaring down on him pitilessly. “Oh dear Lord,” he whispered as the unseen pack bore down, rumbling the planks with a rhythm of galloping claws, baying, snarling and yipping. “Oh dear Jesus.”

He released the post, threw both arms instead around Draeger, and clung there in shameless terror. “Oh me, oh me, oh me!”

With the beam of his flashlight Joe Ben found them clutched thus, swaying in the rain as the dogs surrounded them in a frenzy of delight and welcome. “Why, look here,” Joe called good-naturedly. “Why, it’s Floyd Evenwrite an’ a
date
, I guess. Come on inside, fellows, where we got a nice fire goin’.”

Evenwrite blinked stupidly at the light, becoming more and more certain that his most pessimistic reservations about this excursion would undoubtedly be realized.

“Sure!” Joe called once more. “Whatever you’re doin’ you can do better in the warm.”

Draeger untangled himself from Evenwrite’s grip and smiled back at Joe. “Thank you, I believe we will.” He accepted the invitation as pleasantly as it had been extended.

In the living room Viv brought them hot coffee. The old man spiked the coffee with bourbon and offered them cigars. Joe’s oldest girl dragged chairs up close to the stove for them, and Joe was so concerned that they might catch their death—“Out there froze, huggin’ each other for a little warmth”—that he dragged out a great pile of blankets for them.

Evenwrite refused everything and suffered the humiliation of this mocking hospitality in silence. Draeger suffered not at all; he took the spiked coffee and cigar, complimented Joe Ben on his lovely children and old Henry on the quality of his smokes, and humbly asked Viv if she would be so kind as to fix him a teaspoonful of soda in a half a glass of lukewarm water: “For a cantankerous stomach.”

When he finished the soda water Draeger asked if Hank Stamper might be bothered for a few moments—they had a proposition for him. Joe told him Hank was out on the bank, checking the foundation, right at present. “You boys care to wait here for him? He’s liable to be a while out there—or you want to go out and discuss this proposition with him in the rain?”

“Oh for heaven’s sakes, Joe,” Viv scolded. “It’s miserable out there. He can come in for a while. I’ll give him a call. . . .”

Draeger held up his hand. “Please don’t, Mrs. Stamper. We’ll go out and talk with him.” Evenwrite gaped, unable to believe he was hearing it. “I don’t like to interrupt a man’s work.”

“By
godfrey
, Draeger, what are you saving?”

“Floyd . . .”

“But,
Christ
, this
stove
here . . . an’ you want to up and—”

“Floyd.”

They went out, with Joe Ben behind them like an usher, waving the flashlight in a frenetic tempo to his soliloquizing about the sudden rain, the landslides, the rising river, and had Floyd been playing with dynamite of late? They wound a zigzagging plank walk and found Hank in a poncho and rain pants, dangling a lantern bail in his teeth while he lashed a timber firm against what appeared to be a railroad tie that had washed up recently and was being inculcated into the rest of the formless reinforcing. One side of his face was still bloated blue from the fight and a piece of adhesive dangled uselessly from one end over a cut on his chin. Evenwrite introduced Draeger, and Hank shook his hand. Evenwrite waited a few moments, expecting Draeger to state their business, but Draeger had stepped back from the light, and Floyd realized he was even gonna have to do the goddam
asking!
He swallowed hard and began. Hank took the lantern from his mouth while he listened.

“Let me see if I got you right,” he said when Evenwrite had finished. “You want me to go in the house and call Wakonda Pacific and tell ’em no dice on the three million feet I cut for ’em, and to show your appreciation you boys’ll help me peddle my logs someplace else?”