A Room of My Own Read online

  Meanwhile, the situation across the country was growing worse, and our own city was experiencing the first rumblings of discontent. I guess I was still protected by the naivete of youth, because it took me a while to see what was happening right under my own nose. Uncle Jim was at the center of the coming upheaval at the grain mill, but as usual I had no idea what was going on until a man Uncle Jim introduced as a union organizer came around to our house one evening to talk with the grown-ups. The meeting must have been prearranged, because before the man showed up, Mother had six glasses set out on a silver tray and informed me that when the company came it would be my job to pass around the iced tea and offer sugar and lemon.

  The man appeared at our front door at about eight o'clock that warm June night. Mother had already put Claudia and Molly to bed. Simon and the cousins were out back kicking a ball around the yard. They'd been instructed not to bother the grown-ups. Only I, who was expected to play hostess along with Mother, would have any interaction with the adults--and that, if Mother had her way, would be limited.

  As Aunt Sally seated our guest, Uncle Jim hollered into the doctors' office for Papa and Dr. Hal to join them. While the others gathered in the parlor, Mother put ice into the glasses and poured the tea, then removed her apron and hung it on the pantry door. She smoothed her skirt and patted at the stray hairs that had escaped her bun, then indicated with a nod that I was to follow her into the parlor with the tray.

  When we entered the room the stranger popped up from the couch like a jack-in-the-box springing to life.

  "And this," Uncle Jim said, looking from the man to Mother, "is Lillian Eide, my sister-in-law. Lillian, this is Rex Atwater of the Grain Millers Union. He and I've been working together for the past several months."

  "How do you do, Mr. Atwater," Mother said.

  "Pleased to meet you, ma'am," the man responded.

  "Oh, and my niece Ginny," Uncle Jim added, looking at me.

  "Pleased to meet you," the man said again, this time in my direction.

  "How do you do," I replied, echoing Mother.

  "Well, I guess you've met everyone, then, Rex," Uncle Jim said. Mr. Atwater looked about the room, nodded his assent, and sat down again. Uncle Jim settled himself on the piano bench and crowned one knee with the opposite ankle. He took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket but didn't light it. Dr. Hal was seated, legs crossed, on the end of the couch opposite Mr. Atwater. Papa was in one of the wing chairs that had been dragged from the front wall to a position closer to the couch. He patted the arm of the matching chair to invite Mother to sit by him. She accepted the offered seat and folded her hands primly in her lap, then glanced across the room to where Aunt Sally sat in the rocking chair. Aunt Sally was pushing unconsciously at the floor with the balls of her feet so that the chair moved in brief nervous spurts. A two-toned squeak accompanied the rocking, a high squeak when the chair moved backward, a lower squeak as it sighed forward. When Aunt Sally noticed Mother's disapproving frown, she let the chair come to an abrupt rest. The final squeak was followed by a jarring silence.

  Mother turned her attention to our guest. "It's another warm night, Mr. Atwater, so I've made iced tea instead of coffee," she said. "May I offer you some?"

  "Much obliged, Mrs. Eide," the man said, hitching himself forward to the edge of the couch to accept the drink. "Iced tea would be just the thing to hit the spot."

  I stepped toward the man and held out the tray of perspiring glasses. As Mr. Atwater reached out a small but solid hand to select one, I asked, "Sugar and lemon, sir?"

  He smiled. "No, thank you, little miss. I prefer it without."

  I smiled politely and moved on to offer a glass to Dr. Hal. While Dr. Hal was spooning sugar into his tea, Uncle Jim said, "If you don't mind, Rex, I'm just going to turn it over to you and let you explain to the folks just what your plans are and why you wanted to come here tonight."

  Mr. Atwater cleared his throat as though readying himself for a long speech. I stepped to Papa with the tray. He took a glass and winked at me. I smiled at him in return.

  "Well, I reckon Jim's told you some of what's been going on down at the mill," Mr. Atwater began.

  "Enough for us to realize that it's the union that cost him his job," Aunt Sally interjected abruptly.

  I glanced over at my aunt to find her glaring at the union organizer with steely eyes. For an odd moment, I noticed an uncanny family resemblance between Aunt Sally and Mother.

  Mr. Atwater cleared his throat again and rolled the glass of iced tea between his two small palms. "Yes, ma'am, and I'm sorry about that. That's very often part of the price that's paid when you're forming a union. But our hope is that the men who have been laid off for union activities--there's been plenty of them--will be put back to work once the union is formally recognized. I've seen it happen before, and I hope it'll happen again."

  "You know there's been at least fifty of us laid off for actively supporting the union, Sally," Uncle Jim explained, waving the hand that clutched the unlit cigarette. "Of course, the mill owners won't admit they're kicking men out because of the union." Here Rex Atwater agreed with Uncle Jim by shaking his head. "Why, that old Emerson Thiel and his boys will give any excuse for getting rid of the workers willing to help the union. But the fact is, they're afraid of us being organized. Thanks, Ginny." Uncle Jim took a glass of tea and I moved on with the tray to Aunt Sally, who took the last glass without taking her eyes off her husband.

  My mission completed, I stepped to the edge of the room, not quite sure what to do now. I wanted to stay and hear the conversation. I wanted to have my curiosity satisfied as to what was happening down at the mill, but I could hardly spend the evening standing in the parlor doorway with a serving tray in my hands. Almost involuntarily, my eyes moved toward Mother. She signaled me to take the tray back to the kitchen.

  Obediently, I carried the tray down the hall and laid it on the kitchen table. The voice of Uncle Jim droned on in the parlor. I strained to hear his words as I placed the remaining lemon slices in the icebox, but I couldn't make out much. Latching the icebox door, I figured there was only one way to get an invitation to join the grown-ups, and that was to invite myself.

  When Mr. Atwater began talking again, I bet on Mother's unwillingness to interrupt him to send me out of the room. I stole back into the parlor and slid as quietly as a shadow onto the piano bench next to Uncle Jim, who, listening to our guest, shifted his weight unconsciously to make room for me. I sat ramrod straight with my ankles crossed and my hands folded in my lap, staring intently at Mr. Atwater as though my presence had been expected there all along. Mother's stern gaze fixed on me, and from the very corner of my eye I could see her jerking her head slightly and trying to catch my attention, but I merely sat placidly, ignoring her.

  "... and at these other mills," Mr. Atwater was saying, "we've been able to institute the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, workers compensation, and health and welfare insurance. We want to bring about these same standards at the mill here in this city. So we've been working for the past several months just to get the mill workers to agree to supporting the union. It hasn't been difficult to convince most of them of their need for collective bargaining. They realize that each man on his own has little or no power against the mill owners, and that if they don't become organized, nothing's going to change in their favor. They'll go right on working long hours for too little wages and no benefits."

  "So are you saying," Papa asked, "that most of the men want the union?"

  Mr. Atwater nodded. "I'd say we've got maybe eighty-five, maybe ninety percent of the men on our side."

  "Then why haven't eighty-five or ninety percent of the mill workers been laid off?" Aunt Sally asked tersely.

  "Well, Mrs. Dubbin, not all the men have been so outspoken as your husband. You see, it's the ones who pushed the hardest for the union who have been pushed right out of the mill."

  Papa, as was his habit, took off his glasses and rubbed them with his h
andkerchief. "Of course the mill owners don't want the union," he stated flatly.

  "'Course not," Mr. Atwater confirmed. "In my twenty years of organizing, I've yet to meet an employer who's not opposed to unions from the git-go. To them a union means they've lost the upper hand. It means they have to pay more money for fewer hours of work. But we've got to convince them that the union will be profitable for them, as it will. We've got to convince them that employers and employees are all in this together, and that more is accomplished when the employees are satisfied and well taken care of."

  "Have you started negotiations yet?" asked Dr. Hal. He finished off his tea and set the empty glass down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  "Not yet," Mr. Atwater replied. "You see, Dr. Bellamy, I've got two men working with me from the Grain Millers Union and one from the A.F. of L. Like I said, all we've been doing so far is recruiting workers to support the union. We feel we're ready now to begin negotiations with the mill owners."

  Mr. Atwater paused to take several swallows of his iced tea. With each swallow his Adam's apple traveled the distance of his throat and disappeared beneath his chin the way the weight on a carnival strong-man game slides upward to hit the bell. When he had satisfied his thirst for the moment, he plucked a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and rubbed it once along each side of his neck just below his ears. Mr. Atwater was a small, pockmarked man with nervous hands and reticent blue eyes that flitted from face to face like a butterfly in a garden of flowers. He had dressed informally to meet us--just a short-sleeved summer shirt, gray slacks, and a pair of worn leather shoes that looked like they'd hiked plenty of picket lines. His thinning hair was combed straight back from his forehead, and his ears stuck out from the sides of his head like a pair of ornamental wings. Nothing about his appearance suggested conviction or strength of character, and he certainly didn't seem the type to lead men in acts of defiance for the sake of justice. Yet his voice held a steadiness, a sureness, that said he had--somewhere in the hidden regions of his soul--what it took to do what was right for the working man.

  "Yes," he repeated, "we intend to start negotiations beginning of next week, and we're hoping for the best."

  "But expecting the worst?" Dr. Hal asked.

  Mr. Atwater sighed and set his glass on the table not far from Dr. Hal's. "Yes, Doctor, you could say we're expecting the worst. The signs are there already--what with the recent layoffs and all. Thiel and his boys have got one great advantage--for every man they lay off there's twenty out there waiting to take his place. It's no skin off the noses of the mill owners to lose some of their workers, even if they've been around a long time like Jim. The Depression has offered a ready supply of men who'll work gladly for any amount of pay, fair or no."

  "Then isn't this a bad time to be trying to organize a union, Mr. Atwater?" Papa asked.

  The union organizer shrugged. "It's not the best of times, granted," he agreed. "But we can't bring our work to a halt just waiting for the Depression to end. No telling how long it'll last. No," the man shook his head, "we've got to go right on trying to gain justice for the workers."

  Mother spoke up then. "You say you're expecting the worst, Mr. Atwater. Exactly what does that mean?"

  "Well, ma'am," he said while lacing and unlacing his fingers, "it means we expect we'll have to strike."

  Mother raised her brows in dubious surprise. "Do you think it'll come to that?"

  "I'm afraid it probably will. Like I said, I've been doing this kind of work for twenty years, and most times nothing gets done without a strike."

  "That seems to be the standard means for getting the union recognized?" Papa asked.

  "Yes, sir," said Mr. Atwater politely, almost apologetically. "It's generally the alternative we end up having to take."

  The room fell quiet while the grown-ups contemplated this. The clock on the piano behind me ticked off the seconds, and with each passing minute the tension in the air seemed to grow and expand. From the backyard we could hear the shouts and laughter of the boys as they played. The muffled voices of passersby on the sidewalk reached us, as did the distant tinny music of our neighbors' radio playing on the porch across the street. So still was the small group gathered in our parlor that the room actually pulsated with the chirping of the cicadas amid the gathering dusk. The silence was broken only when Uncle Jim tried unsuccessfully to stifle a cough. Aunt Sally offered him the remainder of her iced tea, which he accepted with a nod.

  When Uncle Jim had stilled the spasms in his chest, Mother spoke up. "Well, Mr. Atwater, could I ask you what precisely this has to do with us? I realize that Jim, of course--"

  "We're looking for help, Lil," Uncle Jim interrupted, his cheeks burning red from the exertion of coughing. "If it comes down to a strike--and like Rex said, it probably will--we're going to need all the help we can get."

  Mr. Atwater's hands stopped fidgeting a moment and rested in the air, fingertip to fingertip. "There's a great deal that goes on behind the scenes of a strike," he explained. "It's not just a crowd of men showing up and picketing outside the mill gates every day. It takes a lot of planning and a great deal of help from people who aren't employed by the mill but who sympathize with the union. Have any of you folks been involved in a strike before?" When he was met with a round of head-shaking, he continued. "Well, then, let me explain a little bit about what happens. Right now we've got our union headquarters in an abandoned garage, but we'll need a lot more room than that once the strike gets underway. That's no problem because there's plenty of empty warehouses not far from the mill. In fact, we already have one picked out. Soon as negotiations fall through, we'll rent the place and set up our strike machine. We'll open a commissary where the men will be fed three meals a day. We've already got promises of food coming from sympathizers--we've got a relief committee working on that--and we're working on putting together a women's auxiliary to take care of the cooking and cleaning up." Here Mr. Atwater glanced at Mother and Aunt Sally. "There'll be cots set up for the men who have nowhere else to go. We'll have a lecture hall for daily pep talks, and we'll provide a room for recreation. Our picket line strategy will be to send at least a couple hundred men out at a time, day and night, on two-hour shifts. We'll form teams of about twenty men. Jim here has volunteered to be a team captain." Mr. Atwater nodded at Uncle Jim, who nodded in return.

  "One problem we've got is the grain delivery. We've been talking with some of the members of the railroad union, trying to persuade them not to haul grain into Thiel's mill should we call a strike. They'd have to go on strike themselves, but seeing as how they're union men too, we hoped they'd be sympathetic to our cause. Well," Mr. Atwater shook his head, "right now it doesn't look good. They claim they're sympathetic, but that it's not in their best interest to support our strike. That means Thiel's going to be getting his grain as usual, and to Thiel, grain is the same as money. He won't want his grain to just sit around and rot, so he'll bring in scabs to work the mill. And when scabs are brought in, things get ugly. We'd like to hold a peaceful demonstration--in fact, we'd like to bypass a strike altogether and sit down like gentlemen and discuss our grievances. But things in this old world don't much work out that way. If we strike, we can hardly just step aside and wave the scabs on through the picket line. We're going to have to fight for our rights, plain and simple.

  "Now, I'm not going to lie to you folks. Two things are bound to happen when we strike. The first is that men will get arrested. But we've already got a lawyer working with us, and the grain union will put up money for bail when the time comes. The second thing that will happen is that men will get hurt. Plenty of men, most likely. I myself have been beaten up by more billy clubs than I can count, and I've even been shot once or twice by sheriff's deputies."

  Mother and Aunt Sally gasped audibly. Papa frowned as he always did when he heard of someone being hurt. As for me, my admiration for the man soared. I couldn't believe I was in the company of someone who'd taken a bullet in the fle
sh. I couldn't wait to tell Charlotte.

  Mr. Atwater continued. "We're going to need to organize our own hospital inside the strike headquarters."

  "Why not just take the wounded to Mercy?" Papa asked.

  "We might as well take the men straight to the city jail as take them to any of the city hospitals," Mr. Atwater explained. "You see, once they're in the hospital, they're held for police questioning, and then as soon as they're well enough--sometimes before--they're hauled to jail till the strike is broken. We've lost too many good men that way in the past. But you see, if we can patch them up right in our own headquarters, we can send them back out to the picket line when they're ready, and they can avoid jail. Of course, there may be times when we can't give a man the care he needs--say he's shot in the chest or something. In that case, we'll see to it the man is taken to the regular hospital for care."

  "Shot in the chest!" Aunt Sally cried. She tipped the rocking chair forward with one angry squeak so that her face, registering obvious horror, was only a few feet from the union organizer's.

  Rex Atwater squeezed his hands together and looked sheepish. "Sorry to upset you, ma'am," he said. "It doesn't happen very often. Last time I was shot it was just a flesh wound to the forearm. Nothing serious."

  "But--"

  Aunt Sally was unceremoniously interrupted by Dr. Hal. "So I take it you're looking for a doctor or two to man this strike hospital."

  "What we're hoping for, Dr. Bellamy, is at least one more doctor to serve as a kind of backup to what we already have. The doctor who used to be the company physician down at the mill, Dr. Wilson--you might know him?" Papa and Dr. Hal nodded to indicate their acquaintance with the man. "He's agreed to be our principle man at the strike hospital. We also have four nurses lined up to be on duty around the clock. It won't be easy. It'll mean a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice on the part of these medical people. My concern about Dr. Wilson is that he's getting old and doesn't have the energy that a younger man might have."