14
PARTISAN REVIEW
And he laughed some more. "And when I stays uut late at night you
just rest easy in your bed, rna, because
I'm
in good company with a lot
of other people. They's hunderd millyun of us, rna," he says, "scattered
here and there about the world if you'd only stop to count us. Us workers
is more numerous like the. sands of the sea, ain't we?" he says, "and we
is just beginning to find it out, and we ain't got no time for slerping even
in the night time."
\Veil, I knew where he had got all that kind of talk from, and 1
didn't like it. Not that I ain't had my full share of misery from the mills,
girl and woman, wife and mother, God knows I have! I give a husband
to 'em, and three sons before Jim, and I hate 'em and them what owns
'em, God knows I do!
But I been around here a long time, and I know what comes from
fighting 'em. I seen plenty of men try before. And when I hea; my boy,
Jim, which is just a kid and the only thing I got left in the world, running
his lip off about standing up against the bosses, about collectmg all the
workers together to fight 'em, I got memories that come to me and send
cold chills up my back, and I ain't got no more strength or reason than
a baby.
So I says, fighting for time, "Look here, son, I ain't young no more
and I ain't strong, and I ain't got nothing in this world left but you.
Now I can't make no kind of argument with you since you is too smart
for me. But I got this thing all figured out in my own way setting in
front of this stove all night long waiting for you, and I ask you to set
here a minute and listen to me."
'Twas getting on toward daylight. Through the window I see a
little yellow creeping up behind the mountains and' I know it ain't long
before the sun comes popping up like it was shot from a cannon. I ain't
got much time I know, so I pulls up a chair beside the stove for Jim
and tells him to set down.
"All right," he says, hesitating a minute and then setting down,
"spill it, rna," he sa.ys, "but make it fast, because I ain't got but a few
minutes and' then I got to be leaving here."
Now I been here a long time and I keep my ears open and I knew
where he was going and what he was going for. Today was the day
the bosses was going to start putting everybody outa mill houses what
hadn't paid their rent, and I had heard all the talk that had been going
round in Milltown, since the Reds come, about not standing for it no
more, about all the mill people joining together to keep themselves and
