Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [89]
The garden is bursting, and it is all I can do just to keep up with the beans and the carrots and the whatnot. I can’t stand to see a garden go to waste and besides I can give the food to the hobos who show up almost every day now. Women have begun to come to the door as well, and some of them I recognize from town, and I think they would rather come to my door than have to go to the town hall for relief money, which would then be public knowledge and get around.
I feel sorriest for the women who have babies with them as the babies look absolutely emaciated.
Are you eating well? I will get Richard to drive me down to the post office again so that I can send you a box. You must take care of yourself.
Love,
Mother
Alphonse
Alphonse slips alongside the familiar line of picketers, thinking that their signs always look homemade and that maybe the strikers could do a better job of printing the words INTERNATIONALISM WILL FEED US and NO UNION WILL STARVE, because all you have to do is take one look at the mill signs — ALL STRIKING WORKERS WILL BE REPLACED — to see which is the spiffier organization. No hand-lettered signs there.
All the picketers look bored and hot and like they wish they weren’t walking around in circles on the cement outside the mill gates. Even Alphonse has gotten used to the sight of the state militia in their peaked caps and their rifles with bayonets, and he thinks they must be dying of heatstroke inside those long brown coats. Once in a while someone from the picket line will throw a stone at one of the guards and all of the soldiers will point their bayonets straight at the crowd and threaten to charge, but only twice, as far as Alphonse knows, have people gotten pricked. Arnaud Nadeau’s father had to go to the hospital, and one other man Alphonse knows, and he doesn’t understand why they keep having these fights since one side has rocks and the other has guns and it is pretty obvious who is going to come out the winner.
Mironson says it’s important that the picketers be peaceful and that he will not tolerate any violence, but you can tell that the picketers, especially the men, are just itching for a fight most of the time. Alphonse thinks the special deputies who go around in plainclothes and masks so you can’t tell who they are are much scarier than the state militia. The special deputies fight with bricks and sledgehammers and go into the tent city at night and take men out and beat them, and someone said that they tried to poison the water supply, but the men who were in charge caught them and made them run away. Alphonse doesn’t know if this story is true, because there are so many stories floating around, and he thinks that sometimes people just make them up when they are having a slow day. This is already the fourth week of the strike, and it is no longer even interesting to see furniture on the street or people standing in line for hours just to get flour and beans from the relief center. When Alphonse can’t get food to his mother, she buys bones from the butcher. She boils them and takes the scum off the top of the pot and then makes a stew with the broth. The stew tastes terrible, and Alphonse doesn’t dare ask her what kind of meat it is in case she says horse meat. He eats and sleeps at home four nights a week, but on weekends they all go to Mrs. Beecher’s house, and even though there is a lot of work to do, it is paradise over there. Just paradise.
He slips into an alley to take a shortcut to the Alfred Street candy store, where the men are waiting for him in the back room. This is the fifth place they have had as a secret strike center, because every time they get set up, the special deputies discover where they are and come in and smash the furniture and even take a swipe or two at McDermott or Mironson, who is a very good boss but who is sort of pathetic at fighting back — he slaps like a girl — or Ross or Tsomides, who