Chapter 12

“Too bad,” said the movie-laundry owner. “Tsk, tsk,” said Brother Walker. And, as he had learned the comment from Joe Palooka, it came out “tisk tisk,” the way he assumed it was pronounced. “Yeah. Too damn bad.” “Too damn many years in the woods for an old fellow; it’s a shame.” “Shame?” said the logger. “It’s a fuckin’ crime, is what it is, pardon me, Brother Walker, but I feel strongly about it.” Then, moved to even greater passion and recalling his interrupted argument, he slammed his black-fuzzed fist down on the table. “But it is a fuckin’ crime! And a sin! That a poor old jack like him should hafta—Listen now: pensions and guaranteed annual wage, ain’t that what Floyd Evenwrite been preachin’ about for nearly two years?” “That’s right, that is the truth.” They were getting back in gear again. “The trouble with this town is we can’t get behind the very organization that is built to help us: the union!” “My God; ain’t Floyd been sayin’ so? He says Jonathan Bailey Draeger says that Wakonda is years behind the other woods towns. And that has become my thinking exactly.” “And that sort of thinkin’ brings us right back to you-knowwho and his whole hardnosed brood!” “Right! Exactly!” The man in the hat slammed the table again. “A shame!” “And as much as I personally like an’ admire Hank and his folks—Christ, didn’t we grow up together?—I for one am of the opinion that right there is where our issue is, ifn you got to aim a gun someplace—right out there at that house, in my opinion.” “Amen, brother.”  “Goddam right amen! Now you all look.” Startled again by the violence of this order, Teddy raises his eyes. “Ifn you got to point a finger, then right that way is the way you point it!” Looking through the glass he is polishing, Teddy sees the finger spring thrusting from the greasy, black-fuzzed fist. “Right out at that goddamned house!” ...the jukebox whirs, bubbles, pulsing color. The electric screen buzzes. The men breathe softly together. The finger, a knuckled iron rod there in the slanting late-afternoon sun, swings slowly to fix like a compass needle. The house. Brute, monolithic structure, thick now with the light of coming dawn and noisy already with the preparations for breakfast . . . “Yeah, you may be right, Henderson.” “Damn right I’m right! If you want my considered opinion, there’s where your trouble is!” Lights and shouts pouring from the kitchen window; laughter, curses. “Wake it an’ shake it, boys. The ol’ man’s already out ahead of ya, old an’ crippled as he is.” And the ringing smell of frying sausages. This is Hank’s bell. This is the way he likes it. This is Hank’s bell ringing. And from behind his bar, standing out of the sun, Teddy watches the men and listens to their logic and is secretly certain that the trouble is not financial—just now, during that idiotic discussion on the lack of working capital, he’d brought in close to twelve dollars, and in broad daylight—and also seriously doubts that it could all be laid at the doorstep of that Stamper house. No, it is another trouble. In his considered opinion . . . “Say, by the way, Henderson, your mentioning Floyd brings to mind: I haven’t seen him in a good day or so.” West of the house, in her shack on the mudflats, Indian Jenny rises from her cot and dons a rose-red dress turned mudflat brown, and begins to wonder whom to blame for the sorry state of her life and why can’t she ever find her goddam Saint Christopher medal? South, Jonathan Bailey Draeger watches the road ahead for a place to spend the night before continuing on to Oregon. East, a postman tries to interpret the penciled scrawl of a threepenny postcard’s address and almost gives up ...  “Yeah, where is Evenwrite?” “Up north, in Portland. Tryin’ to get the goods once an’ for all on this very subject we been discussing, by God...” The fist closes, but the finger still points. The old house hunches over breakfast, still noisy and bustly, and ignorant of the fingers beginning to swing from all around the country in a polarization of blame, beginning to converge like points on a constricting circle. . . . Up North, in Portland, Floyd Evenwrite sat like a rubber toy in a forty-dollar suit, stiff and inscrutable and gas-filled. He had just finished plowing laboriously through a pile of yellow paper. The papers, once neat and crisp, lay on the table in front of him like a pile of limp fallen leaves. You could see the sweat on the papers. His hands always sweated a lot when he used them for anything besides manual labor. Matter of fact, he couldn’t remember for sure that they used to sweat at all. And now, as he rubbed his forehead and smallish red nose, they barely felt like his own. They felt naked, and nervous, and like somebody else’s hands. No calluses was how come. Funny. You wouldn’t think a man could get so attached to something like calluses, would you? Maybe they’re like cork boots; with corks it don’t make no matter how long since you quit wearing ’em because once you been used to going around with ’em, then the ground underfoot is always gonna seem slippery and strange without— though you maybe been wearing oxfords for years and years. Finished with his facial rub, he sat for a moment without moving and let his eyes remain closed. His eyes were tired. And his back was tired. In fact all the hell over he was tired. But it had been worth it. He knew he’d made a good impression on the flunky. And he was pleased by the report; it proved conclusively that the Stamper mills were in absolute fact, by Jesus, contracted to supply Wakonda Pacific with lumber. No damn wonder old man Jerome or the rest of the WP bunch hadn’t been sweating the month-long walkout. The boys could strike till hell froze shut and it wouldn’t be hurting profits. Not as long as Stamper and his scabby kind were cutting for them! It was even worse than he’d figured. He’d figured Jerome had contacted Stamper and maybe made a deal to buy some logs later on to make up for the setback suffered during the strike. He’d suspicioned this when he saw how hot and heavy the Stampers were hitting it. And it had griped his ass anyhow, them working while the rest of the town laid off. So he’d written Jonathan Draeger, and Draeger had put this union detective to researching the suspicion. And Christ, what that research had turned up: since back as far as August, Stamper’d been contracted to WP, cutting and storing the booms at his place so nobody’d know. So them sonsabitches across the river there were not only working, business as usual while the rest of the town sweated a strike, they’d been doing twice, maybe three goddam times as much business as usual! His eyes opened with a snap. He scooped up the untidy bundle of papers and clapped them in a manila folder. “This oughta do it,” he said, nodding at the thin flunky who had sat across the table from him, drumming his fingers nervously, all the while Floyd had studied the report. The man seemed reluctant for Floyd to leave. “Ah—you used to go to school with Hank Stamper, I heard,” he said, in a voice too friendly for Floyd’s taste. “You heard wrong,” Floyd replied coldly, refusing to look at the man. He picked up a can of beer in his other hand and took a drink from it. He knew the man had been watching him. He knew his every twitch and belch were being recorded by this little, thin-shouldered information flunky and would eventually get back to Mr. Draeger himself; this report, different as it was, showed that. It was thorough to a gnat’s eyelash. His report to Draeger would likely be just as thorough. Floyd didn’t like the man’s little bootlicking grin and he ached to bring his fist hammering down on that nervous handful of fingers. He hated it that this sort of man had to be associated with the union at all. And when he’d made an impression on the boys at the top, Floyd promised himself he’d see to getting shut of this sniveling little snake. But if you aim to impress the ones on top, you damn sure have to impress the ones on the bottom. So he kept his face impassive and his spine stiff and forced himself to take another sip of the flat beer.