NO WINE IN HIS CART
7
"The strikers," she cried. The great change in her own feeling had
made her forget them.
"Yes, he said, "I was at a meeting this very afternoon. The citizens
are going to organize and break the picket line. They should deputize
every citizen of the town and go down there."
"The citizens..." she repeated, her blood going cold in her. She had
11
never seen the man sitting across from her, never known him.
"But, Arnold, who are the citizens?"
"Every respectable citizen," he repeated, his face lean and mean, "all
of them."
"Why, Arnold, I never saw you like this, haven't they a right to
organize?"
"They're not running our business. We'll show them who is the
head of this country."
She thought of all his humanitarian ·ideas, the right of assemblage,
Jeffersonian democracy about which he was fond of talking, but she said
nothing. Something seemed to stand visible in the room between them
at last, to emerge out of the heat. The fishermen were still sitti11g in the
dusk fishing for their supper. The emergence was so dear that she thought
she would scream.
Henrietta stood in the doorway announcing supper. Arnold got up,
she walked in front of him but their life was over, the doorway was unreal,
the mahogony table with its summer cloth. She sat down like a ghost
and he sat opposite, his face flushed, his eye narrowed coldly. He went
on to tell her about the meeting, about the battle of Bulls Run there had
been that afternoon between the police and the strikers, he told about
a street full of men standing side by side like a tide and cracking the bulls
'Jver the head, driving them back, stopping trucking completely and the
women stood side by side with them ...
"The women?" she cried, "were there women there?" Her poor
mother had wanted her to marry above her.
"Many women," he said, "even young girls.
It
was disgusting. They
probably brought in a lot of thugs from Chicago, beat up the policemen
in the performance of their duty, to protect life and property."
"The women were there," she said, then they weren't marrying above
them any more.
Henrietta brought the salad. She \vas listening to everything, Stella
could tell by her dilated eyes. She must try and keep her tem;Jer. The
green fluffy leaves sat on the salad plates from Carcasonne. \Vhy, half
the things they had were peasant things, everyone brought them back from
Europe. There on the dishes from Carcasonne was the same tiny figure,
the little workman's figure, dogged, real, bending now under a load of
faggots. On every plate he stood bending a little with the faggots on his
