Clarkton by Howard Fast

hopeless life I live? It must be a pretty picture for you to live with. I should feel sorry for you, only I don’t.…”
    And through the pain of her head, through the panic that overcame her and made her want to run out of the room, Lois could only think of her son’s death, her son’s leavetaking from this bright and sorrowful earth, her tall, handsome son, who, with several hundred of his comrades, was taken by the Nazis in a French forest, herded with the others, grouped, pressed back, and then shot down to lie in the snow with a hole in his head. That was all that Lois could think of.

8. U nion headquarters of the Clarkton local was a ramshackle frame house at the junction of Oak Street and Fourth Avenue, the outside edge of the town, with the hills beyond, with a gurgling brook running by. Following Oak Street, the pavement turned into an old dirt road which crossed the creek upon one of those old New England covered bridges. Running east on Fourth Avenue was a long line of workers’ homes, those strange red-brick country slums, native to this part of America, and with a quaint, old-country air. The quaintness was further enhanced by the fact that each apartment in the row had four tiny rooms, no central heat, no running water, and no sewage. Every ten families shared a communal outhouse and pump, a fact which Danny Ryan pointed out to Mike Sawyer as they walked up Fourth Avenue toward the union hall.
    â€œThese here are all French Canadians,” Ryan said. “They were mostly brought down in nineteen twenty-nine, when old man Lowell decided he would break the strike—and did, by God—but they’re good union men now, except that the church is beginning to yell red to them.”
    â€œYou have much trouble with the church?” Sawyer asked.
    â€œIt’s coming. They got a new priest here from Boston, Father O’Malley, big and good looking, with the right kind of a smile. A very smart cookie. He comes over to the house and makes a big fuss with the kids—I guess he likes kids, all right—and then he says to me, ‘I hear you’re a Communist, Ryan.’ ‘It’s been said,’ I tell him. So he says, ‘If a man wants to call his brother comrade, that’s all right with me. I love Communists. I hate communism.’ That’s the kind of a cookie he is, very smart, right on the ball. He started slow, but now he’s making a big pitch about the godless reds. Not against the strike; he’s too smart for that.”
    Sawyer was staring at the bridge, and Ryan explained that it was a hundred and forty-three years old. “They were going to tear it down about ten years ago, but old Lowell put up a big kick and had it fixed up.”
    â€œIt’s wonderful,” Sawyer said. “I never saw one of those old covered bridges before. I saw pictures of them, but I just never saw one before. This is a mighty nice place to work.”
    Glancing at him, Ryan said shortly, “Are you kidding me?”
    â€œNo—hell, no.”
    â€œI don’t get you, Sawyer—Christ, I don’t get you. Maybe you been out of circulation too long.”
    â€œWhat’s eating you?” Sawyer said, trying to hold onto his temper. “What in hell is eating you, Ryan? I’m trying to get along. I want to get along with you. If I can’t feel that Ham Gelb’s being here in town is the worst thing that ever happened, providing he is here, that’s my judgment.”
    â€œTake it easy,” Ryan said.
    â€œI’m trying to take it easy. I’m trying to tell myself I got to work with you.”
    â€œI blew my top,” Ryan said slowly, biting his lips. “This is a strike, not a picnic.”
    â€œI know it’s a strike, Ryan. I don’t know all the answers. I’m trying to learn a job. I didn’t ask them to drop me into the biggest strike wave that ever hit this country. But they did, and