Bread and Roses, Too (11 page)

She was coming back! Mrs. Gurley Flynn and the one they called Big Bill were coming back to Lawrence to lead the strike. The most beautiful woman in the world was coming back to help them ... to help
him.
Wasn't he on strike against Mr. Billy Wood as much as anybody? Well, he hadn't scabbed, had he? No matter how cold and hungry he was, he, Jake Beale, had never once crossed that cursed bridge and gone through those iron gates.

Jake brushed aside the times he had been on the verge of crossing the bridge and heading back into the mill. He hadn't, though, had he? Something or someone had always stopped him. God or fate or furious little Giuliano. He wouldn't have to feel ashamed when he saw her again. He could hold his head high. He was one of the oppressed workers she was coming to save.

There was soup in the halls these days after Annie Lopizzo's death. It had got them a lot of sympathy. In the halls where he sneaked in to eat, in the shops, on the streets, people talked about how, in the rest of the entire U.S. of A., everyone knew how the law in Lawrence was twisted to suit the mill owners. That fool Breen laying that dynamite—and who had paid him? Not the strikers, that was for sure. The girl in the Polish bakery told Jake that the stupid man had no more sense than to wrap the sticks in copies of his undertakers' journal, with his own name on the address label—not likely that a striker would have copies of that lying around.

"But now undertaker Breen is out on bail while the men who threw snowballs are in jail until next year. And what, what will become of Mr. Ettor and Mr. Giovannitti, who had nothing to do with Annie Lopizzo's death? They'll probably hang."

Jake listened, trying hard to look properly sorrowful, but all he could think about was that Mrs. Gurley Flynn was coming back. She would know the truth behind all the government lies. She'd make them own up to all their plots and wickedness. He had to see her. Since Ettor and Giovannitti's arrest, meetings on the common had been outlawed. The only places left to meet were the national halls. She mostly went where the women and children gathered, but, by golly, he'd be a kid—or even a woman—Italian, Polish, Turk, whatever it took to weasel his way into every meeting where she was to speak. He might even get himself a bit of grub while he was at it.

Maybe she would notice him again. Not merely smile this time but pick him out special-like, tell him how brave he was—just a boy, too—to stand up to the owners, to suffer hunger and cold and homelessness, so that he could go on being a part of this great strike.

He snuffled. His nose was always running these days. As he wiped it on the back of his sleeve, he saw to his horror how dirty his shirt was. If his clothes were that filthy, what of his face? He'd never bothered about bathing before—didn't really believe in it. But she was so clean, so white and lovely, her cheeks like roses on fresh snow. What would she think of a boy like him?

For the first time in his life, he needed to know what his face looked like. The only mirror he knew of was in the sacristy of Saint Mary's. There was also running water in there, in case he decided to wash up a bit. He wasn't about to wash in the canal. Not only was it frozen and smelly, everyone knew it would make you sick to death if you got a drop or two in your mouth. There was nothing for it. He'd have to go into Saint Mary's and hide out somewhere inside until after dark.

He went to noon Mass. Well, it was warm in there, and nobody paid attention to him. He slid under the pew afterward so the sexton wouldn't see him as he came down the aisle, checking for trash. Without meaning to, he fell fast asleep. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since he could remember, and the church, though drafty, seemed almost toasty compared with a trash heap. When he woke up, it was pitch dark except for the little light on the altar and the tiny candles—not so many lit now that people had no money. He felt his way down the aisle and up on the platform. It was like being a blind man, and he wouldn't have minded, but he had the urge and he wanted to get into that priests' secret little toilet as fast as he could. He found the door, fumbled at the knob, and opened it. There was an electric bulb hanging from the ceiling and he managed to find the chain and pull it, which gave him ample light to find the privy.

The basin had a mirror over it, so after he had relieved himself, he went to study his face in the shadowy light. His eyes were the thing that struck him. He leaned close to the mirror. They were blue, surrounded by whites that were blood streaked. His face was dark as a Spaniard's—but that was probably the dirt. He ran water into the basin. There was a towel hanging nearby, so he wet it and began methodically to wipe his face. Eventually, it came a lighter shade, but still, in the shadowy light, it seemed to him that he looked as gray and tired as an old man. Why would someone so beautiful lower herself to talk to the likes of him? He didn't want her pity—though with a face like that he might get her pity—he wanted her to like him, to think he was somebody good and brave, somebody on the way to becoming a hero like Joe Ettor or Big Bill. With this face, she was likely to see him as just some bum kid, somebody who slept in trash piles and pilfered poor boxes. Of course, he knew that that was what he was, but he had to be, didn't he? Had the world given him any choice? Well, it was going to be different from now on. He'd stick with the strikers, eat at the halls when there was food, and find someplace decent to sleep—maybe at Angelo's or at the shoe girl's.

He grabbed some of the paper crackers from the cabinet, took a swig, just a small one, from the priests' supply of wine, turned off the light, and went back into the dark sanctuary. As he felt his way across the altar toward where he thought the stairs must be, his foot hit something, something soft. He gave a little squeak of surprise. At the same time, the lump he'd tripped against rose up from its knees and grabbed his shirt. He was pulled right off his feet until his face was next to a much larger face, so close that when the man spoke, the spit from his mouth hit Jake's carefully wiped cheek.

"What are you doing in the sacristy, you little thief?"

Jake's feelings were hurt. How could it be stealing to take a little water, a few crackers, and a small, very small, swig of wine? "Nothing," he said. "I ain't no thief."

"Mercy, boy, you smell like a canal rat." The hand put Jake's feet to the floor but held tightly to his shirt.

"Don't," Jake said. "You'll rip me shirt."

The hand moved to take his arm. "Come with me, son." If there had been any choice, Jake would have hightailed it out of there, but wriggle as he did, he could not break the steel grip on his arm.

He was dragged out a side door, across an alley, and into another building, where there was enough light for him to see that his captor was none other than Father James O'Reilly, who was head of Saint Mary's and, by rumor, the real boss of every other Catholic church in town.

"Mrs. O'Sullivan!" his captor roared. A small woman came scurrying from somewhere, wiping her hands on a large apron as she ran.

"Yes, Father?"

"Take this little heathen and clean him up for me, will you?"

"But I'm in the way of fixing your dinner, Father."

"Dinner can wait. Put him in the tub and scrub him within an inch of his life."

"But, Father," the woman was turning quite red, "he's not a baby. He's a growing boy. It don't seem proper—"

"Oh, woman, get Father Donahue, then. He's got to be cleaned. Can't you smell him from there?"

"But why, Father? Surely, he has a home and parents who—"

"I very much doubt that they, if they exist, have ever bathed him, and I won't have anyone eating in my kitchen who smells worse than the rubbish outside the door."

***

Jake's first impulse was to struggle, but the warm water in the tub was surprisingly soothing, so he just sat there and let the young priest scrub away. His back was still sore, and when the priest's hand reached toward it, he winced. The priest shook his head at the sight of the welts and was very gentle there. Even Jake's hair was doused with water and scrubbed with the strong yellow soap. The water in which he sat was almost as black as the water in the canal, and before he was done, the priest let it all out and drew clean water to rinse off the soap. He dried Jake with a large towel and then wrapped the towel around him.

"Now," the young priest said, "don't you feel better?"

Strange was more like it. He felt strange, as though he were no longer himself, that the yellow soap had scraped Jake Beale clean away and revealed someone else, someone he'd never met before.

The priest left the room. Jake would have escaped at that point, but his clothes had disappeared and he didn't fancy going out into the winter evening with nothing but a towel wrapped around him. And besides, hadn't O'Reilly said something about supper? In a few minutes, the young priest returned, bringing with him a pair of trousers and a shirt.

"They're not new, but better than what you had, I dare say." He turned his back to let Jake put on the clothes. The cuffs of the shirt were a bit frayed, but Jake had to roll them up anyway. He folded the pant legs a turn or two as well.

"I'm sorry we've got no shoes for you or underwear. But, then, you don't seem accustomed..."

Jake shook his head. "No matter."

"But here—I brought you a pair of me socks. They may be large." He held out a pair of black socks. Jake hesitated. "It's all right," said the young priest. "I've another pair."

Jake took them and put them on. They were several sizes too large, but why should he care? Already his toes were luxuriating in the unaccustomed warmth. They would make a layer of wool between his feet and the wet snow that seeped into his worn-out shoes. Every day that he had worked in the mill, he had helped make woolen goods for sale, but he'd never before owned anything made of wool. He nodded his thanks. He didn't know how to put it into words.

He was taken to the rectory kitchen for his supper, and what a supper it was. It was almost enough to turn a boy not only into a Catholic but to thinking seriously about becoming a priest. Did they eat like this every night? Meat and potatoes, and great slabs of bread with gravy, and three kinds of vegetables, and soup, and coffee and some kind of sweet, heavenly pudding afterward.

He didn't mind at all that he hadn't been invited to eat in the room with the big table where the priests sat but in the kitchen with Mrs. O'Sullivan. What a stroke of luck that was. She kept filling his plate and made no comment on how he ate or how much. His belly was near to bursting, but he couldn't make himself stop.

It was Father O'Reilly who brought the meal to an end. He came into the kitchen just as Jake was downing the third serving of pudding. "Still at it, are we, me boy?"

His mouth was so full, he could only nod.

"Well, that's fine. You need some meat on those bones of yours."

Jake slid his chair back from the table and stood up. He was eyeing the door, plotting a route of escape around the priest and out into the dark of the winter evening.

"No need to be afraid, lad. I don't intend to call the police."

Jake looked up, startled.

"God will hold you accountable, you know. For profaning the sacred elements and stealing from the poor." How the devil did the man know? Jake made a lunge for the door, but the priest caught him and spun him around. "I'm not through yet, me lad. You will hear me out, like it or not."

Jake didn't like it, but what choice did he have? The man's grip wasn't about to let him go. He watched half fascinated, half terrified while, with his free hand, the priest reached down into a deep pocket in his black robe. "Here," he said.

Jake's eyes nearly popped out of his head. The man was holding out a silver half dollar.

"Yes, take it. Buy some supper for the rest of your family, and then tell everyone to go back to work. This strike is the work of the devil. Tell them that. They have no business turning their children into beggars and thieves whilst they follow these godless radicals. Will you tell them that?"

Jake nodded. Though just exactly whom was he supposed to tell? His father, who hadn't worked a day in the last two years and was likely furious that Jake was not scabbing in the mill?

"And don't let me catch you in the church again unless you're praying in the pew, do you hear?"

Jake nodded furiously.

"On second thought, why don't you take your prayers to Holy Rosary? Let Father Milanese deal with you for a change. I think we've about had our fill of you here at Saint Mary's." He smiled, as though he were joking, but Jake couldn't be sure.

The priest let go his grip and gave the boy a swat on his bottom, which Jake was happy to take as a signal that he was truly dismissed with new clothes on his back and fifty cents in his fist.

Later he asked himself why a hundred times. Why, with a half dollar in his possession, did he use most of it to buy whiskey to take to his father? He must have been crazy to do such a fool thing. Yet that is exactly what he did, and almost proudly. He'd show the old man how well he was doing in the middle of this cursed strike—while others were freezing and starving, he had new clothes and money to spend on a present for his pa.

There was no one at the shack when he got there. For once he was half disappointed that his father was gone. He set the bottle right in the middle of the cot where his pa couldn't miss it and left to find a place to spend the night that wasn't a trash heap. He didn't want to ruin his new clothes quite yet.

Rosa wasn't going to school anymore. She was terrified by the idea of navigating the streets, crowded with workers and with the militia and police always present. But whenever there was soup to be had, Mamma dragged her to Chabis Hall for the meal and the meeting that followed.

Big Bill and Mrs. Gurley Flynn, along with the local strike committee members, were going around to the various halls, cheering the workers on, telling them that the union was on their side. It seemed to be true: union workers throughout the country were sending money so that the strikers could have soup for their bellies and coal for their fires. The union had a name—the Industrial Workers of the World—but no one ever called it that. If a person was feeling formal, it was the "IWW," but usually it was simply the "Wobblies." The Wobblies' motto was "Solidarity." That meant they weren't like the big unions, who represented only one kind of worker. The Wobblies believed in standing united across various skills and national origins.