Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [28]
Alphonse can’t speak.
“It’s okay,” the man says. His hair is parted in the center and his eyebrows go almost straight across. He has the bluest eyes Alphonse has ever seen.
“Alphonse,” he says finally.
“I’m McDermott.”
Alphonse nods. “Is that your first name or your last name?” Alphonse asks.
“It’s my last name,” the man says, “but it’s all anyone ever calls me. Except my family.”
“What do they call you?”
“Quillen.”
Alphonse nearly laughs.
“You speak English pretty good,” McDermott says. “I’m a little deaf, so I have to look right at you when you’re talking.”
“All right,” Alphonse says.
“What did you see from the window?” the man asks.
Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“It’s okay,” the man says, reaching out a hand and briefly touching his arm. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Alphonse heaves a great breath of air. “I saw men going inside,” he says.
“Right,” the man says. His smile vanishes, but his face doesn’t look angry. “Best not to talk about what you saw, all right?”
Alphonse shakes his head violently. He makes fists with his hands in his pockets to keep them from trembling.
“How old are you?” the man asks.
“Twelve,” Alphonse lies.
“You work in the mills?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“The Ely Falls.”
“Doing what?”
“Bobbins,” Alphonse says.
The man stands up and stretches his back. “The men in there?” he says. “They’re trying to make it so your pop will have more money and you won’t have to earn.”
“I don’t have a pop,” the boy says.
“You have a mother?”
“Yes,” Alphonse says. He nods vigorously in case the man hasn’t seen his lips.
“In the mill?”
“She’s a weaver.”
“What’s her name?”
“Evanthia. Blanchette.”
“Your mother works on my floor,” the man says.
Oh, Jesus, Alphonse thinks.
The man puts a hand on Alphonse’s shoulder. “I want you to do something for me,” he says. “I want you to run to Tsomides Market and get me some cigarettes. Lucky Strikes.” McDermott hands Alphonse the coins. “I’m going back inside, but I’ll come out in fifteen minutes,” he says. “There’s an extra penny there, so get yourself some candy.”
Alphonse puts the coins in his pocket. “I’ll be back before then,” he says, looking at the man intently, making sure he can see his mouth. “I’m very fast.” Immediately, Alphonse feels the color come into his face. What a stupid thing to say.
The man smiles. He reaches over and musses the hair at the top of Alphonse’s head. “I knew that,” he says.
McDermott
“Where you been?” Ross asks when McDermott returns to Nadeau’s front room.
“I needed air,” McDermott says.
For reasons of security, the two front windows have been shut, and McDermott can hardly breathe: the heat plus the cigarette smoke have made the room nearly airless. The man named Mironson, who has come up from New York City, is still talking. He’s a sweet-faced man, small boned, with delicate hands and small feet. A thick hank of dark hair keeps falling in his face. Physically, he seems the least likely of men to inspire a crowd.
Twenty loom fixers in a room no bigger than a good-sized automobile. McDermott thinks of animals in a cage. Just the smell of the men is testament to a kind of animal-like restlessness. He has the sense that Boutet and Tsomides and O’Reilly and Ouellette and all the other Francos and Greeks and Irishmen want to flex their muscles, and he wonders if caged anger produces its own smell. Maybe the choice of a small room for the meeting was deliberate on Mironson’s part, a kind of strategic move that will make the men nervous, anxious to break free.
“We have to . . . faster and . . . ,” McDermott hears as François Boutet gestures with his hands. Boutet is short but powerfully built. His arms bulge below the short sleeves of his Sunday shirt. McDermott can catch only a portion of what is being said in the room because the words seem heavier than the air. He can see the anger, though, as sharp and as clear on the men’s faces as if it had been etched.
“Doing the work of . . . or three,” Paul Tsomides adds. Tsomides’s brother