Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [90]
Every morning there is a meeting of the strike committee, and usually Alphonse is there to get his orders for the day from McDermott. Alphonse is by far the youngest person, though there are two older boys who are maybe sixteen who do some of the driving. Alphonse wishes he were old enough to do some of the driving too, because it would be great fun to be behind the wheel of Mahon’s bread truck, even though you don’t have a seat and have to stand up.
After the meeting, there is always a rally at one of the mill gates and usually there is a song session, which is supposed to pep up the picketers, though some of the songs are just too embarrassing to sing. And then one or two of the strike leaders will give interviews to the newspaper reporters who have been coming into town. One reporter was from a New York paper, which got everybody all excited, and when Alphonse went to the picket line that day he noticed that the women were dressed in their Sunday clothes and were hoping to be interviewed. Alphonse is himself dressing better these days, mainly because his mother doesn’t have to go to work and has more time on her hands and made him a shirt out of good white cotton and a pair of pants that for once aren’t too short for him that he sometimes wears to Mrs. Beecher’s house. And Mrs. Beecher has knit him a pair of socks, though the weather has been too hot for socks lately.
And tonight, McDermott said, they will go to Mrs. Beecher’s house because they have to get out another newsletter, you have to keep the spirits of the picketers up, and Mrs. Beecher said on Sunday when he left that when they all came back she would make fried chicken and corn and ham and peach ice cream, which he just can’t wait to taste.
McDermott
He shuts down the printing press and walks into the front room, and he can see in the relaxation of faces and shoulders that everyone is glad for the break from all the racket the press is making. Thibodeau has to set the second page, so McDermott is, for the moment, unoccupied. He wipes his hands on a handkerchief that could use a wash and puts it back in his pocket.
Honora has her back to him, her hands doing that liquid thing over the keys, Mironson speaking in his halting dictation beside her. “A socialist society is only possible if capitalism breaks down completely and commits suicide,” he says. “When we come together we will be unstoppable,” he says. She types without glancing at the machine, though she sometimes bends forward to peer at the paper in the cylinder. Her hair nearly covers her neck now, even when she rolls it. She has four dresses that he knows of, which she wears in a kind of rotation that is a mystery to him. His favorite is the pale blue with the man’s collar and the belted waist. She has, since the beginning of the summer, developed a faint tan, which is now the color of toast. Not like McDermott, who goes blotchy lobster pink if he even looks at the sun. Luck of the Irish, Ross said. Fucking Irish, McDermott said.
He stands on the threshold, not needing to go farther into the room, content merely to stand and watch Honora and smoke a cigarette. All the windows are open for a breeze, and he can feel the humid air that has just a touch of cool threading through it. She sits with her back straight, and occasionally she rubs a muscle at the top of her spine. He envies Mironson, who gets to sit so close to her, to smell her, possibly, when all McDermott can do is watch.
He can’t even think about how much he envies Sexton Beecher.
Once when Vivian and McDermott were alone on the porch, she said to him, “You look a bit like Honora,” as if they had been speaking of Honora just that minute, when, of course, they had not, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Vivian had seen something that he had meant to keep to himself.
He studies that bare spot, slightly damp, at the top of Honora’s spine, the spot she just rubbed, and thinks he would like to touch her there. He closes