The Celestials (27 page)

Lucy and Sampson, who had arrived late, sat a row behind the Pendletons, and Lucy held out hope that either her employer had not been attuned to their talk or that he had not been dealt too hard a blow by it. In her few weeks of work for the man, she had found herself with more and more goodwill toward him. Some of this had to do with
the fact that he was under strain both at home and at work, and she discovered easy sympathy for the public nature of his troubles. Some of her compassion had its source in a kind of selfishness: it was a relief to have the town's tongues wagging about scandals other than her own. Ida had told her years ago that the time would come when people would return to thinking of her simply as Lucy Robinson, rather than placing that ubiquitous
poor
in front of her name. They would find other troubles to toss around. There were always more balls in trouble's basket. But Lucy had not been able to imagine such things coming to pass, and still felt as a person laid low with illness feels about those moving about her in health. How did they manage it?

So since these weeks with the Sampsons, she was enjoying the vigor of comparative good health. She found him gruff and clumsy and full of nerves about appearance and reputation, but rather than wincing at his displays, she discovered herself to be smiling at them and occasionally succumbing to the urge to pat him on his thick, sloped shoulder or even once to tug painlessly at his graying beard, astonished at her forwardness and the pleasure it brought her.

In those moments, he had stiffened and allowed the girl's exuberance to pass without comment, as he did not know what words to put to use in such a situation. He would, however, have been able to say that her presence in their rooms brought to mind cups filled to the rim. He felt every day upon his return to the apartment that he was encountering a large table, well set for ten happy guests.

He had, of course, heard the Pendletons as well as she had, but had not been particularly struck by their comments, since they articulated his own sentiments. Regarding the tilt of his wife's head, the particular line of her neck, he could tell that she would soon be suffering from one of her headaches. He knew, too, that she would not, in public, minister to herself. The brown bottle of Dodd's Nervine would remain in her bag until her return home. In such cases, he knew, it offered her some small solace to have him within reach.

He glanced at Lucy and was struck by the thought that she had once been a child no larger than the one in Julia's arms. Winging its way behind that as if in migratory formation was the notion that baby Alice would one day take the form of a young woman. These were ordinary thoughts, comprehensible by the dullest of half-wits, yet they filled his mind with astonishment.

“What is it?” Lucy asked. “Are you overheated?”

“Do you realize that you were once a tiny infant?” he asked.

She regarded him as if for signs of heatstroke or brain fever. “I do,” she said.

He sat back in the pew and placed his hands on his thighs as if having just completed school exams. “That's a remarkable thing, isn't it?” he said.

She sat back as well and watched the Reverend Mr. Bartlett take the pulpit. “It is,” she said.

There was a brief delay, as there seemed to be some discussion as to the order of the speakers.

“You know,” Sampson said. “I built most of this church.” He gestured around them.

Lucy followed the gesture. The building was, in fact, much like him: squat, of sturdy brick, filled with New England history and pride. It was nearly as wide as it was long and, without the spire added the previous year, would've appeared even less like a church and more like a factory. Indeed, she felt that the enthusiasm about the recent expansion, especially the construction of the spire, the tallest in town and the second-tallest in the state, as more than one congregant had mentioned to her, had most to do with attaching some lift of alleluia to an edifice that seemed much more comfortable squatting.

“It is a lovely building,” she said.

Sampson took perhaps more pride than he should have in the church, if not in the goings-on within its walls then at least in the walls themselves. He had certainly been instrumental in the fund-raising and construction, though perhaps his role had not been as crucial as he imagined. As his world in the factory grew more and more under siege, the importance of his church and his other civic contributions increased, and in this last week, he had found himself going out of his way to pass by these buildings as often as possible on his daily constitutionals.

In two years' time, Lucy, still in his employ, would hear of the fire in the church, and she would think of him, his disappointments and disasters held before her as suddenly and clearly as her own hand.

“The spire is the second-tallest in the state,” he said.

“I have heard that,” she said.

At the podium, Reverend Anable seemed to be successfully mediating the disagreement between the two speakers. Lucy and Sampson sat and watched.

“Would you like to sit with your wife and child?” she asked quietly, for reasons she didn't fully understand.

He looked again at the back of his wife's head. “I think there is no room for me there,” he said, and the room quieted, as if in response to his observation, as Mr. Bartlett did, finally, commence to speak.

Alfred had no hopes for the man's preaching, except for its duration, as he looked forward to an hour or more in Ida's company. He tried to ignore that she seemed to have forgotten he was there.

Bartlett opened with the society motto and then asked the gathered group to recite the society pledge. He referred those on their inaugural visit to the pamphlets beneath the pews.

The group stood. Ida spoke from memory. Alfred read along silently with the logic that not speaking the words aloud made his whole participation less hypocritical.

They were told to sit.

Mr. Bartlett went on to say that Old King Alcohol was the great enemy of the human race. Temperance was the only way to throw him from his throne. He didn't have to remind this gathering that temperance was the moderate and proper use of things beneficial and the abstinence from things hurtful.

“See?” Ida whispered.

“What?” Alfred whispered back.

The bearded man told them to quiet themselves.

Alfred sat back, so perplexed by Ida's comment that he missed much of what both speakers said. He was doomed, he thought, to be in the position of trying to make sense of Ida V. Wilburn.

Professor Hitchcock drew the meeting to a close by reminding the group that temperance was not merely an issue of physical well-being but also one of morals and ethics. Theirs was the first society to do full justice to women, for example. As women had suffered more terribly than any other class from the evils of intemperance, it was felt that they should have a voice and a vote in all measures designed to overthrow this monster foe of the race. The wisdom of man and the love of woman should always be conjoined to accomplish the best results.

Alfred wondered if this was what Ida had meant for him to take from this evening, another lesson in her long struggle to get him to admit that boys were, by and large, foolish and wild.

“I'm no simpleton,” Alfred whispered.

Ida regarded him. “Of course you're not,” she said.

He waited for something else, some qualifying comment, but it never came.

Hitchcock went on, “Our Order knows no distinction on account of the color of a person's skin any more than it does the color of his hair or eyes. I believe that here in North Adams, with your proud tradition of welcoming all races, you must know this more clearly than elsewhere.”

It was as if he had reached down from the pulpit and pulled Julia and the baby up there with him. She felt the room's attention on her bare neck like hands. She tucked Alice's blanket more securely around her and reaffirmed her grip on the child.

“Could he know about the child?” Alfred asked Ida.

“That's not the point,” Ida said.

“It's not?” he said, hoping she would explain.

“Ssh,” she said, putting a hand on his knee. “Just listen.”

But he could scarcely listen with his knee bearing the weight of her hand, and Hitchcock seemed at the end of his wisdoms, and after an explanation of membership, which apparently involved the signing of the pledge along with the payment of one dollar to be a year's member, ten for a lifetime, and the singing of “The Teetotalers Are Coming” and “The Drunkard's Dream,” the meeting was dissolved.

Charlie did not know how to stop the train that seemed to be steaming its way toward his delicately constructed life, yet simultaneously he felt it impossible that the train was actually coming or could do any real damage. He understood these to be insights in conflict, but felt them equally nonetheless, the effect being a constant state of inner argument. He was, by the middle of August, pummeled and exhausted by himself.

For all of Sampson's reassuring talk to the newspapers, both he and Charlie knew that as strange in appearance as the strike was, it was still a strike, and as such was summons and provocation to both employer and his trusted
man. Even the phlegmatic George Chase was ruffled, stopping in to his employer's office twice as often as before to ask Sampson about his plan of response.

There were still workers doing their jobs so it was not that Charlie had such a difficult time keeping the boxes of product trundling out the back door. That was mostly a matter of gently pushing those workers who had remained at their machines to stay a little longer, work a little harder. But the beginning and end of each day, when Charlie had need to pass through the living quarters and encounter Ah Chung and his pack, were insult of the sort most difficult to stand. Each sight of them was humiliation and a blow to the reputation that he had spent so many years cultivating. He was gripped by the conviction that his damaged reputation was the sole obstacle to a life with Julia. How could she imagine a life with someone who could not even manage his own? He could take pride neither in the man he had been nor in the man he might be. He held Ah Chung centrally responsible.

Yet his disbelief that any of this ruin could actually come to pass and his unshakeable conviction that he was capable of working his way out of the tightest grip allowed him to continue to countenance the reassurances he gave Sampson, about both the operation of the factory and the procurement of the identity of the child's father, and to continue to act as though the workers' respect and admiration was a given. He even treated Ah Chung's dozen as though he was the best kind of father with mischief-making sons. He inquired after the eating habits of one and made a medicinal brew for another. If they smirked or exchanged looks with one another in response, he chose not to see. Some days he was more successful than others. Most of his nights were sleepless. His appetite was poor, his work habits careless, his mind filled with images of Julia and Alice: torment and consolation in equal parts.

It was Sampson, finally, whose impatience overflowed. On a Tuesday evening in late August, he called Charlie to the Wilson House apartment and announced that he was sending for new Chinese from San Francisco. “The market is turned down, and still we are having trouble filling orders,” he said. “If these boys here will not fill their berths, I will fill them with others like them.”

Charlie nodded, yet he knew with certainty that this violation of their contract would only further enrage Ah Chung and the rest, even the ones who had for the moment chosen not to strike. But his ears were attuned to the sounds of Julia and the baby coming from behind the thick oak door over Sampson's shoulder. The sitting room was filled with evidence of the child and the care Julia was taking with her. Tiny towers of small clothes were in various states of construction on the sewing table. Baskets filled with the baby's pleasures and necessities rested in handy places throughout the room. The air was suffused with the smell of talc and milk. There was no sign of the gifts he had offered.

Behind the door, Julia was talking to the child as if to a grown woman. What if the door opened and he stood in her full view? What would she see? So, while nodding, he found himself challenging aloud his employer's instructions. It was polite and circumspect, but challenge
nonetheless. Did Mr. Sampson not think that perhaps just the threat of calling in new workers might be enough to persuade the strikers back to their tables? Since one of the strikers' complaints was what they believed to be their oppression, might it not be better to make clear their options to them, but allow them the power of choice?