Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [29]
“They’ve changed the wage rates . . . wife . . . piecework, and she gets less for that,” says a drunk named McAllister. He works in the Penderton mill, but McDermott has seen him often in the speak.
Some of the men are standing, while others are sitting on wooden chairs or on the floor up against the wall. All the furniture except for the kitchen chairs has been moved into the hallway. The room itself stinks of wet and onions. McDermott wonders where Nadeau’s wife and children have gone.
“It’s too easy . . . laid off,” says Ouellette. “If I get . . . who’s going to feed my kids? I have eight kids.”
“You’re . . . about a strike,” a man called Schwaner says to Mironson, “but if we strike, they’ll bring in scabs, and we’ll lose our jobs. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“You can’t afford to . . . current wage,” Mironson says quietly.
McDermott has to strain to hear the man. He watches his mouth carefully.
“You can’t afford . . . no . . . security. You can’t . . . long hours.”
“But you go back to New York,” Schwaner says. “Meanwhile . . . and our kids will be on the streets. Jobs are scarce now. Where am I gonna find . . . lose my job?”
“Jobs are scarce,” Mironson says. “The mill owners . . . running scared . . . competition from the southern mills . . . cutting corners. It will only get . . . It’s just a matter of time before you “ — Mironson points at a man — and you, and you, have no jobs at all. But with a union, your jobs will be secure. Your children should be in school, not in the mills,” Mironson says, looking right at McDermott.
I don’t have any children, McDermott almost says.
“And how we gonna do that?” asks a man named Delaney, his snarl coiling around the room.
But Mironson doesn’t seem to fluster easily. “By securing a . . . wage,” Mironson says evenly. “By making sure . . . child labor laws are enforced.”
The men grumble, talking out of the sides of their mouths. Some of them, McDermott knows, have three or four kids earning in the mills. The last thing they want is to have the child labor laws enforced.
“Yes, there are going to be sacrifices,” Mironson says. “In some cases, terrible . . . No conflict is . . . risk. But my question . . . this: Are you willing to . . . health and your . . . and the health and security of your wife and children, in the hands of . . . whose only goal is to make another dollar? If that dollar comes at the cost of . . . clinic, what will you do? If that dollar comes at the cost of more hours a day . . . what will you do?”
The sudden shock of Mironson’s raised voice produces a temporary silence in the room. No man wants to appear to be a coward. Mironson is brilliant at this, McDermott thinks.
“So what happens now?” Ouellette asks finally.
“Open the windows, for God’s sake,” someone shouts.
Two windows and a door are immediately flung wide. McDermott edges his way closer to the window to get a breath of air. He thinks the men might agree to form a union just so they can leave the room. He ducks his head down to the open window, and when he does he sees the boy standing across the street at the corner, as if he were waiting for a bus. The boy has a Franco hairline, his stiff brown hair pointing forward all around the face. He badly needs a haircut.
Wisely, the boy does not come to McDermott, but waits for him to walk across the street. Together, they turn the corner, out of sight of the Nadeau apartment.
“You are fast,” McDermott says.
“Tsomides wasn’t open,” the boy says, only slightly breathless. He hands the Lucky Strikes and the penny change to McDermott. “I had to go to the candy store on Alfred Street.”
“You went all that way?” McDermott asks. “How come you didn’t want the change?”
The boy shrugs. He has on short pants and a cotton shirt that once had long sleeves. It’s mended just above the pocket. The boy’s shoes have no laces. McDermott thinks about his own younger brothers, Eamon and Michael, who are a handful. They’d have kept all the money, would never have shown up with the cigarettes at all.