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By Root 5103 0

the prostrate forms of their bloodied parents. Some were in hysterics. In a few minutes the police had swept the platform clean, the trucks were driven off, the militia were marched away, and only a few sobbing battered adults and weeping children remained. One was Tateh. He leaned against a pillar to regain his strength. His mind was not clear. He began to hear sounds that had been made minutes before. He heard the little girl’s voice: Tateh, Tateh! At that moment it occurred to him that the station platform was unnaturally bright. The train was gone. The realization struck his heart like a chord. He was now completely alert. Still he heard the voice. Tateh, Tateh! He looked down the tracks and saw the last car of the train to Philadelphia some yards beyond the end of the station. It was not moving. He started to run. Tateh, Tateh! As he ran the train slowly began to move. He ran onto the tracks. He ran, stumbling, with his arm out. His hands caught the guardrail of the observation platform. The train was picking up speed. His feet were coming off the ground. The ties began to blur under him. He clung to the railing, finally hoisting his knees to the platform overhang and clinging there with his head pressed against the bars like a man in prison begging to be set free.

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Tateh was rescued by two conductors who lifted him by the arms and the seat of his pants onto the observation platform. First they had to pry his fingers from the railings. He found his daughter on the train and ignoring everyone around her, conductors, passengers, he gathered her in his arms and wept. Then he noticed that her new cloak was bloody. He looked at her hands. They were smeared with blood. Where are you hurt! he shouted. Where are you hurt! She shook her head and pointed at him and he realized that the blood all over her was his own. It came from his scalp, blackening his white hair.

A doctor who happened to be on board tended Tateh’s injuries and gave him an injection. After that he wasn’t too clear about what happened. He slept lying on his side across two seats with his arm for a pillow. He was aware of the motion of the train and his daughter sitting in the seat facing him. She looked out the window. They were the only passengers in the special car for Philadelphia. Sometimes he heard voices but he could not bestir himself to understand what they said. At the same time he clearly saw her eyes with hills of snow proceeding slowly, in a curve, over her pupils. In this way he made the trip south to Boston, then to New Haven, through the Westchester towns of Rye and New Rochelle, through the train yards of New York, across the river to Newark, New Jersey, and then to Philadelphia.

When the train arrived the two refugees found a bench in the station and spent the night there. Tateh was not entirely himself. He had in his pockets, fortunately, that part of his week’s wages he had set aside for the rent: two dollars and fifty cents. The girl sat beside him on the shiny bench and watched the patterns made by the people moving through the station. By the early morning hours there was only one porter pushing a big broom across the marble floor. As always she seemed to accept totally the situation in which she found herself. Tateh’s head ached. His hands were swollen and scraped. He sat with his palms cupping his ears. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t think. Somehow they were in Philadelphia.

In the morning he picked up a discarded newspaper. On the front page was an account of the police terror in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He found his cigarettes in their box in his pocket and smoked and read the paper. An editorial called for an investigation of the outrage by the Federal Government. So that was it, the strike would be won. But then what? He heard the clacking of the looms. A salary of six dollars and change. Would that transform their lives? They would still live in that wretched room, in that terrible dark street. Tateh shook his head. This country will not let me breathe. In this mood he slowly came to the decision not to go