Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [78]
The men had their own bedrolls, though Honora had had to find extra towels and soap. She worried for the boy, who was sleeping among so many men, but then she saw that McDermott was looking out for his young charge. As she lay in her bed, unable to sleep, she could hear the men snoring, even over the sound of the surf outside.
Vivian had gone back to her own house, and briefly Louis Mironson had gone with her, needing to use the telephone there. Honora, who found sleep impossible, slipped downstairs to cut the precious grapefruit that Vivian had brought, to get a head start on breakfast. She was in the kitchen when Mironson came back into the house through the porch, his feet still bearing traces of wet sand; and for a few moments they sat together in the kitchen, each with a glass of milk. He’d walked back along the beach, carrying his shoes but still in his coat and tie, guided by the moonlight, he said, adding that it had been some time since he had spent any length of time near the ocean. He was grateful to her, he said, for letting them use the house. She asked him if he was married, if he had a family, and he said no, that he’d been traveling up and down the east coast for several years now and that he hadn’t found anyone with whom to settle down. The work was too important and too urgent, he said, and she noted that he nearly added too dangerous but stopped himself. He looked away and thanked her and said that there might be more people coming from time to time and would that be all right, and Honora said it didn’t seem to be her decision to make. He would see to it, he said, that she and Sexton were given money as compensation. If she would help with the cooking, he said, he would be most grateful, but he would arrange for provisions. It did not escape Honora’s notice that it was she and not Sexton with whom Mironson seemed to be making the deal.
A woman named Sadie, a “comrade from New York,” might be joining them at some point, he said, assessing Honora’s response to the charged word.
“You’re a Communist,” Honora said.
“Yes,” Mironson said. “I am. The others are not, though.”
“Why are you and they working together?”
“This country has a long history of spontaneous strikes becoming interchangeable with the frankly revolutionary.”
“In other words,” Honora said, “you’re using each other.”
“In a nutshell, yes,” Mironson said.
He added that Honora shouldn’t expect much help from Sadie in the kitchen; she wasn’t that sort of woman. Honora stood and took the empty milk glasses to the sink and washed them.
“Well, good night,” he said, standing as well, and Honora was surprised to see how short he was. He unrolled his trousers, leaving a dusting of sand on the floorboards. He tried to pick the sand up with his fingers. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’ve got a broom.”
“This is important, you know,” he said.
“I can’t pretend to understand this,” she said.
“There’s not a lot to understand,” he said. “The workers and their families are living like dogs.”
And Honora thought that Louis Mironson might be surprised at how much she knew about living like a dog.
In the morning, Vivian returned early, looking polished and nearly luminous in a peach linen ensemble, while behind her a man named Ellis brought in carton after carton of food that challenged Honora’s organizational skills in the kitchen, though it was a lovely task to have to put it all away on her shelves and in her icebox. Vivian credited Jack Hess with supplying the food, though it was perfectly obvious that Vivian was funding the provisioning. In her dressing gown, Honora fixed a breakfast of eggs and bacon and ham and toast and coffee — along with the precious grapefruit — as one by one the men and the boy came downstairs, looking a bit shy and sleepy. They once again ate in the front