Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [96]
Sexton
Sexton inspects another sheet and cranks the cylinder with more force than is probably good for the machine. He cannot believe that just an hour ago his own wife sat at the table and made a fool out of him by not supporting what he had to say about guns. It’s perfectly obvious that without guns they cannot possibly win this thing, that it will go on forever.
And that’s the interesting part, he thinks, because he cannot quite make out why he does not want it to go on forever. It’s not having the men in his house — he likes that; it was always too quiet with just Honora and him. And it certainly isn’t wanting to go back into the mill, because he doesn’t expect ever again to work there. He’s betting Mironson will be able to use him somewhere within his organization; or, better yet, maybe now he can get a job in sales. In January and February, when he went out looking for a job, he had a sorry attitude; he was defeated before he’d even begun. Now he feels anything but defeated. What he feels now is . . . Well, what he feels now is that he’s just itching for something to happen.
He thought he could make that sale.
He was sure he could convince Ross and Mironson and Tsomides — Ross a kind of sergeant mobilizing supplies and troops, Mironson a tactical general, thinking things through in that droopy way of his, and Tsomides because he’d been injured. As for McDermott, Sexton isn’t sure where he fits in, but McDermott wasn’t there at lunch, so it was only Ross and Mironson and Tsomides Sexton really had to sell. But none of them was buying. Sexton argued that at the very least they should give guns to the strike leaders so they could protect themselves against the special deputies, who everyone knows are no more than thugs hired by the bosses. He was concerned that the special deputies might one day show up at Fortune’s Rocks, he said, thinking that the image of a man protecting his home might sway the others. They couldn’t keep this place a secret forever, he said, and, frankly, he was amazed they’d kept it a secret this long.
Still Mironson wouldn’t bite.
Maybe McDermott is the guy to convince, Sexton thinks. No, McDermott would never go against Ross and Mironson. You can just tell the guy’s not on board one hundred percent. Kind of a dreamy fellow, actually — probably because he can’t hear too well. And that’s another thing that’s got Sexton stumped. Why do they have a deaf guy on the team? Seems like a big liability to him.
He cranks the sheets out as fast as he can now. It galls him that he prints only the agendas. Nobody reads the stuff anyway, as far as he can tell. The real juice is in the newsletter with that dopey name. Amazing how that thing has gotten so popular. It seems like they spend half of their supply money these days on paper. At least Mironson has got Sexton running the books. Mironson could hardly work the adding machine they bought, and no one else wanted to, so that job fell to Sexton, which was something. But it’s a backroom kind of job, and Sexton wants to be out front, which is where he should be. Making sales.
As for Honora, he will deal with her later. Tell her to button her lip. Well, he won’t put it quite that way, but he’ll let her know that he didn’t like it, doesn’t want it to happen again. Although when he’ll tell her this is a mystery. She’s always doing the dishes when he goes up to the bedroom these days, and usually he is so tired — with a little help from the booze — he can’t stay awake long enough to wait for her. And when he opens his eyes in the morning, she’s already up and in the kitchen making breakfast. He’ll have to corner her before he leaves, though he doesn’t want another scene like the one they had in the kitchen that first weekend. McDermott heard that one, Sexton is sure of it.
A wife should be respectful. Not contradict her husband at the table. Not in front of the men.
He wonders if he should start looking now for a job, see what’s out there in sales. Even if he has to go a little distance,