The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [193]
he wanted right away to explain a strategy to me, being very deliberate in that birdhouse of tropical screaming and laundry heat, to say nothing of the whiteness of the sun. "Now wait," I called, taking Sophie's place on the hogshead. Some began to yell, "We strike!" "Now please listen. It won't be legal--" "Oh, the hell! Cry-eye! What's legal, that we get a buck and a half a day? What's there after carfare and union dues? Do we eat? We're just going to walk out." "No, you don't want to do that. It would be a wildcat strike. The Federation guys would send other people to take your place and it would be legal. The thing to do is sign with us so there can be an election, and when we win we can represent you." "Or if you win. That's again a few months." "But it's the best you can do." I broke open a bundle of cards from my bag and was distributing them into the waving hands when suddenly a bulge started from the direction of the laundry; several men were fighting through the crowd, thrusting away the women, and the joint began to jump. Just as I realized that these were the enemy union guy and his goons I was grabbed from behind, off the barrel, and slugged as I landed, in the eye and on the nose. I burst into blood. My buddy with the Indian's beak stepped on me, but that was in his rush at the guy who hit me. As he pushed him back a Negro chambermaid raised me. Sophie thrust her hand into my pocket and pulled out my handkerchief. "Dirty gangsters! Honey, don't worry. Throw your head back." There was now a ring of women guarding me, formed around the overturned barrel. When one of the sluggers made a start for me there was a lunge of the women for that place. Some had picked up scis- sors, knives, soap scoops, so the union guy called off his gorillas, and they came to position around him, who was small by contrast but dangerous-looking, if a runt, in his snappy man-about-town suit and his Baltimore heater. He appeared like somebody from the sheriff's office who had changed to the other side of the law; or from cat meat to human flesh. He seemed as if he would smell at close quarters like a drinking man, but that was perhaps the color of rage and not of whisky in him. Of unpreventable meanness, able to harm as much as he threatened. I could somewhat show that with those bursts of blood on my noserag and shirt, and snorting out more, while my stinging eye swelled to a slit. However, he was the one who had the law on his side, being the representative under contract of these people. "Now, ladies, get out of the way and let my men take over this punk who got no business here. He's breakin' Acts of Congress and I could swear a warrant against him. Besides the hotel could jug him for trespassin'." The women screamed and showed their scissors and weapons, and the Negro woman, who sounded like a West Indian or some Empire Britisher, said, "Never, you bloody little peanut!" So, while scared, I was also astonished. "That's okay, sister, we'll get him," said one of the goons. "He can't go everywhere with this nooky protection." His boss told him, "Whyn't you shut your trap!" And he said to me, "What right you got to come here?" "I was asked here." "Damn right he was! You bet we asked him!" While the cooks in their long hats and others of the better-off faction hollered and scoffed and held noses and pulled the imaginary toilet chain at me. "Listen, you-all. I'm your representative. When there's any beefs, what am I for?" "To throw us out when we come to the hall to ask you something, while your feet are on the table and you're drinking from the bottle and pickin' horses!" "There doesn't have to be any goddam mutiny, does there? Now I see a lot of cards this sonofabitch meddler passed around, and I want you all to tear 'em up and have no more truck with him and them." I said, "Don't do it!" The guy who had slugged me made a pass to push through the defense of women and they heaved against him. Sophie pulled me away, through the back and along service corridors. "There's a fire307 door back here," she said. "You can get down the escape.