Power by Howard Fast

successful they hoped to be. They did not talk, vibrantly and poetically, of Stygian pits of darkness, where men drove dynamite into a black rock face and lived and worked in clouds of coal dust and deadly gas. Nor must you feel that this was a pose or a charade on the part of Ben. Ben knew as well as anyone else what a deadly, hopeless hell the life of a miner was; but, as he told me afterwards, confronting me, he had to paint a picture that was brave and romantic. And to a very large extent, he believed it. You see, in the beginning, then, I did not fall in love with the Ben Holt you knew—no, not even with the headstrong, desperate man you met in West Virginia, leading an army of armed miners, and certainly not with the white-haired, somber giant who taught a whole world the meaning of power. I look back through time as an old woman, my dear Alvin, and there was not one man but many men. In some ways, we don’t change at all; but in other ways, we do change so much.
    Shall I finish my story of that evening? I am not putting down the actual words that were said—you must realize that—it was so very long ago; but not so different, either, for while there are things that have become vague and fuzzy, those first days with Ben are clear and unclouded. We talked some more at the table, or rather he talked while Father and I listened. Once the barrier of place and class was broken, the words poured out of him in an endless torrent, and nothing he said was dull or familiar. From his point of view, he found there in our home a sweetness and warmth that he had never encountered before. He had no illusions about the virtues of the rich, but neither did he promote the legend of the virtuous poor. He had lived with poverty all his life, and he had sufficient knowledge of the degradation and suspicion and ignorance and hatred it breeds. In later years, I have seen Ben stalking like a raging lion in the homes of millionaire coal operators, filled with and voicing anger and contempt; but there was another Ben, and we were not millionaire coal operators, only a small-town lawyer who lived alone with his daughter.
    After dinner, we went into the parlor, and Father asked me to play something for them, while he and Ben smoked cigars. Father’s one extravagance was cigars, and he always kept a large humidor of panatelas, fragrant and mild, that he had sent to him from Cuba. Ben, on the other hand, smoked a brand of cigars which I remember seeing only in the coal towns of Pennsylvania, and which has today suffered a well-deserved demise. They were referred to as “the digger’s” or “miner’s consolation,” and in those days sold two for five cents, and no one who ever smelled their fragrance will forget it. Ben had a pocketful of them and longed for a cigar, but did not dare light one in our house. I remember his face as he lit the panatela Father pressed on him, and in after years, whenever he speculated on the psychology of a union leader who sold out, I would twit him about that cigar. Anyway, there he sat, with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other, trying his best not to look self-conscious, scrunching his long arms and legs, so that he would show less shirt cuff and less skin between pants and socks, and listening to my rendition of the “Moonlight Sonata,” an important part of the repertoire of every serious young lady pianist of the time.
    He had been wonderfully possessed and at ease all evening, but now he began to withdraw into himself and become surly. It was not that he didn’t enjoy the music; I have almost never known a miner who didn’t have a feeling for good music—perhaps because there is so much of the Welsh blood and influence in them; but rather because he suddenly saw himself in his position and resented it, the fact that he did not dare to smoke his own cigars and had to sit there in silence and listen to my less than noble performance.