Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [85]
“We have to be in place early in the morning when the strike begins. To make sure no one goes into the mills. To distribute the leaflets.”
“Oh,” she says, mildly disturbed that Sexton didn’t tell her they were leaving before dinner. She wouldn’t have made the lemon meringue pies if she’d known. To be fair, Sexton may not have known either. “I’ll walk back with you, then,” she says.
“Thanks for putting us up,” he says as they set out. “Especially last night. We were all kind of wild.”
“Everyone was having a good time,” she says.
“I’m sorry?”
She remembers that she has to look right at McDermott when she speaks to him. The muted roar of the surf makes conversation difficult even under the best of circumstances.
“Here,” he says, stepping ahead of her and turning. “I’ll just walk backward like this.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I do it all the time.”
His shirt is stiff and wrinkled with salt as well, she notes. His trousers are rolled to midcalf. It is awkward going, McDermott walking backward and Honora stepping forward, and it is slightly uncomfortable as well — having her face so closely looked at to make sure that her words are seen.
“I was just saying that it seemed like everyone was enjoying themselves,” she says, aware that she is overenunciating each syllable. She tries to relax her mouth.
He shrugs. “We drank too much.”
“Yes.”
“You want some gum?” he asks, holding out a pack.
“Sure,” she says.
He unwraps two pieces and gives her one. “That was nice back there,” he says. “The way you were trying to teach Alphonse to swim.”
Honora tied her skirt up and waded out with Alphonse and told him to lie as flat as a board. She would hold him up, she said, and she wouldn’t let him go until he was ready. But every time he nodded and she removed her hands, his feet sank immediately to the bottom. “He needs a bathing suit,” she said. “His trousers were dragging him down.”
“He needs a lot of things.”
“You care for him, don’t you?”
McDermott shrugs. “I suppose I do.”
“He was terrified of the water,” Honora says.
“Is this it?” he asks, bending to pick up a speck of grass-green lying in the sand. She inspects the shard between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes,” she says. “That’s a beautiful color. Not very common.”
“Well, here,” he says, handing it to her. “Keep it for your collection.”
“Thank you,” she says.
“Actually, I came to find you because I wanted to tell you something,” he says. “Friday night, when we first got to your house and you and I were talking in the kitchen, you asked me if it was safe, what we were doing, and I told you, more or less.”
Honora nods.
“Yeah, well.” He looks away. “It’s not,” he says.
Honora slows her pace.
“It’s dangerous,” McDermott says. “I thought you should know that.”
“Oh,” she says.
“We’re using you.”
For a moment, she is taken aback by the bluntness of his statement. “I understood that,” she says. “Just like Louis is using you.”
“But we’re using Mironson, don’t forget.”
“Are you a Communist?” she asks.
“Hell, no,” he says. “A good Irish Catholic like me? No, I’m loyal to the union, not the Reds.”
A man and a woman, both in straw hats and walking at a normal pace, draw up alongside Honora and McDermott. He waits for them to pass by before he speaks again. “It’s perfect for us, a house far from town. Your husband says he’s never told the mill where he lives and that the only address they have for him is the boardinghouse. So if we can keep this place a secret . . .”
Honora nods.
“The organization Mironson works for is sending up a press from New York, and we’ll probably bring it over sometime this week,” he says. “Obviously the Copiograph machine can’t keep up with the volume we need.”
“No,” she says, brushing her hair off her face. She has goose bumps on her arms from the east wind. She rubs them to warm them up.
“The reason I say it’s dangerous,” McDermott says, “is that we had a press set up at a warehouse in the city, and one night some men in masks came in and destroyed the press and all the other equipment with sledgehammers. One of our