When he said as much to Rita one morning before heading out to the latest picket line, she frowned. "That wasn't what you told me when you first led the construction workers out on strike," she said. "Then you thought you were doing something worth doing, something important."
"I know." He tried to recapture the feeling of outrage, the feeling of urgency, he'd had then. It wasn't easy. It was, after more than a year, next to impossible. "Too much has happened since, and not much of it good. Have we got enough money for groceries this week?"
His wife nodded. "And for the rent when the first rolls around. You're making as much as an agitator as you ever did building houses."
"Swell," he said. "When I build a house, though, I've got something to show for it, something I can see, something people can live in. Same when I was making steel. Once I was done, it was there. It was real. I don't even know that I'm doing any good by agitating. Plenty of people aren't making as much money now as they were before we started striking."
"They will, though. They'll make a lot more if you get your just demands." A solid Socialist-more solid than Chester-Rita assumed the demands were just. He'd been sure of that at the beginning of the strikes. He wasn't sure of anything any more.
He shook his head. He was sure of one thing: he had to get out the door to get to the picket line by the time the construction crew got to the site. Some of the workers were leery of crossing picket lines, and the ones who were were usually the real builders, the men who knew what they were doing. Half the time, the scabs the contractors hired to take strikers' places couldn't tell a chisel from a brace-and-bit. Chester wouldn't have wanted to live in a house put up by such half-trained workers.
The sun hadn't risen. December days in Los Angeles were longer than they were in Toledo, but sunrise still came late. And, by Los Angeles standards, it was cold: it had dropped down into the forties. Chester Martin found the idea that that could be chilly laughable. He wore a denim jacket over a cotton shirt and a pair of dungarees. He might have put on the same outfit in April in Toledo. In December, he would have frozen to death with it. But his real cold-weather gear had sat at the back of the closet for years. He'd finally given most of his winter-weight coats and heavy wool mufflers to the Salvation Army. He didn't think he would ever need to wear that kind of outfit again.
He had to watch where he was going as he made his way down to the trolley stop. One thing where Toledo beat Los Angeles hollow was street lights. They were few and far between here. Whole neighborhoods-his, for instance-did without them altogether. Long winter nights made that especially noticeable.
Street lights or not, the southbound trolley came on time. Chester tossed his nickel in the fare box and bought a couple of transfers, too. He rode down toward the suburbs, where most of the building was going on right now. Dawn came as he rattled along. It was a leaden dawn, the sky full of gray clouds. He wondered if it would rain. That would shut things down better than any picket line. Probably not, though. Even by Los Angeles standards, 1939 had been a dry year.
Torrance, where he got off, reminded him of Gardena, the little town to the north of it where he'd started building houses after coming to California. Groves of figs and walnuts and oranges and lemons and alligator pears still flourished. Truck gardens, many of them run by farmers from Japan, shipped strawberries and lettuce and carrots and other produce to half the country, thanks to refrigerated freight cars. And, here and there, clusters of houses with clapboard sides mostly painted white sprouted among the greenery.
At the site where the picket line went up, the houses were still sawdust-smelling wooden skeletons. Strike headquarters was a big tent on a vacant lot two blocks away. Four or five burly men guarded the tent day and night. Contractors had tried to get the police to remove it, but the man who owned the lot was a good Socialist, and wouldn't swear out a trespassing complaint.
One of the guards tipped his battered fedora to Chester. "Mornin'," he said. "Pot of coffee's going inside, you want a cup."
"Good deal," Chester said. "Any trouble?"
All the guards shook their heads. "Not a bit," answered the one who'd spoken before. "Bastards don't bother anybody they figure he'll fight back." This time, all of his friends nodded.
That wasn't true. The class enemies and their lackeys weren't cowards. They defended their interests no less earnestly than proletarians. Things would have been easier if they hadn't. Chester said nothing about that. Why hurt the guards' morale?
He just ducked into the tent. Sure enough, a coffeepot perked above the blue flame on some canned heat. Several not very clean cups sat on a card table nearby. He'd drunk from far worse during the war. There was a sugar bowl, but no cream. Sugar would do. He poured himself a cup, quickly drained it, and took a picket sign. It said, shame! and unfair to workers!, so it could be used in almost any strike. The handle was a good, solid piece of wood. Tear off the sign, and it turned into a formidable bludgeon.
Shouldering the sign, Martin went back outside. Another picket was walking across the lot toward the tent. "Morning, John," Chester called.
"Morning," John answered. "Chilly today."
"You say so." Chester smiled. No, he didn't think he'd ever get used to Los Angeles notions about weather.
He had a good picket line in place around the houses under construction before many workers started showing up. Some turned away, as if glad for an excuse not to go to work. Others squared their shoulders and crossed the line. The pickets showered them with abuse. They had to watch what they said; some of the scabs could have been plainclothes cops. General curses and insults were all right. Threats like, We know where you live, or, Wait till you get off work, could land a man in jail on an assault charge. Lawyers were expensive. Using them drained a strike fund in a hurry.
Around and around and around. In a field across the street, crows and Brewer's blackbirds with golden eyes pecked for worms and bugs and seeds. Hammers started banging at the construction site. The pickets cursed. "Scabs!" they shouted. Around and around and around.
Halfway through the morning, a white-haired, sun-browned man in a windbreaker fell into step with Chester. The man was missing most of two fingers from his right hand. "What the hell you want, Mordechai?" Martin asked.
"To talk with you, if you care to talk," the foreman answered. "Some of this mess is my fault. Maybe I can help fix it. Decent chop-suey joint around the corner and a block and a half down. I'll buy you lunch, if you'll let me."
Chester considered. The ex-Navy man was a pretty good guy, even if he had sold out to the exploiters. "I'll eat with you," Chester said. "I won't let you buy for me."
"Deal," Mordechai said at once.
"And no sneaking in more scabs at lunchtime, the way you guys have done before," Martin said. Mordechai nodded. Chester studied him. If he was a liar, he was a fine one. Chester nodded, too. "All right. We'll do that."
At noon, they walked to the chop-suey place together. It wasn't bad. Martin had certainly had worse. He ate without saying much. If Mordechai wanted to talk, he could talk. After a while, he did: "How can we settle this? I flew off the handle, and people have paid for it all over town. You can have your job back. No trouble there. Same with most of the people on your side."
"If you would've said that then, I'd've slobbered all over you, I'd've been so happy. Now?" Chester shook his head. "If I give in now, I sell out my pals. I can't do that. The people you work for have got to recognize that the union's come to Los Angeles. We don't want the moon, but they've got to bargain with us, and they've got to do it in good faith."