PRELUDE
15
their wives and children from being thrown out into the streets by the
bosses.
So I says, "Look here, son, you better think twice before you go to
fighting with the bosses." He lifts his head kind of surprised, but I
didn't give him a chance to say nothing. "The bosses," I says, "will get
the best of you in the end, no matter what you do. You only got one
chance with 'em-if you act meek and humble and keep your mouth shut
and work your heart out for 'em, they'll give you enough to keep living
so you can keep on making money for them. That's your only chance,
son the way things are between you and the bo.>ses. But if you act
foolish, if you go around talking too much, if you try to fight 'em, they'll
hate you and spy against you. and-and kill you. Now.... "
But Jim had done jumped to his feet. "Look here, ma," he hollers,
"you don't mean nothing like that. You is , just so skeered for me, you
done stopped thinking sense. I won't listen i:o that kinda talk from you,
rna, or nobody else," he hollers, " I done already make up my mind, and
it ain't no use for you to try to fool me. I ain't got time to argue with
you, but they's a hunderd millyun
~f
us,ain't they? and we is more numer–
ous like the sands of the sea, ain't we, ma? And if we just stick together,
if we stand by each other and fight for each other and don't lake nothing
more off of the bosses, we is bound to win in the end, ain't we? even if
some of us does get killed?"
Well, he looked so serious standing there by the stove with the yellow
sky behind him that I couldn't say nothing, not a word. He grabs me
by the shoulders, his eyes shining, "They been killing us all the time,
rna, that's what you got to understand. Look at pa," he says, his voice
calmer; he had done stopped shouting, "and Ed and Joe and ::)am," he
says, naming his brothers what died from the mills in one way or another,
direct or indirect; "the ground around here is red with the blood or us
workers now, ain't it, rna? And ain't nobody gonta stop it, but our–
selves, us workers," he says, "us Reds. Yes," he says, "they got guns
and they got cops and they got money and they got power, but, rna, they's
a hunderd millyun of us, ain't they? and we is more numerous like the
sands of the sea, ain't we?"
I oouldn't say a word. I just set there in front of the stove. I
knew I had lost him, I had knowed it all the time, but he was my only
son left and I got to b6 excused for fighting for him a little.
But I didn't say nothing-! knew there wan't nothing
i
could do,
nothin wan't gonta stop him now, not cops, not soldiers, not bosses, not
