Goldfarb came back saying that the collection hadn’t been so good. Sixtynine dollars and some pledges. “Christmas time coming on… you know. Everybody’s always broke at Christmas.” “Henderson made a lousy speech,” grumbled Don. “He’s more of a socialfascist every day.”
Mary sat there feeling the tiredness in every bone of her body waiting until Don got ready to go home. She was too sleepy to follow what they were talking about but every now and then the words centralcommittee, expulsions, oppositionists, splitters rasped in her ears. Then Don was tapping her on the shoulder and she was waking up and walking beside him through the dark streets.
“It’s funny, Don,” she was saying, “I always go to sleep when you talk about party discipline. I guess it’s because I don’t want to hear about it.” “No use being sentimental about it,” said Don savagely. “But is it sentimental to be more interested in saving the miners’ unions?” she said, suddenly feeling wide awake again. “Of course that’s what we all believe but we have to follow the party line. A lot of those boys… Goldfarb’s one of them… Ben Compton’s another… think this is a debatingsociety. If they’re not very careful indeed they’ll find themselves out on their ear… You just watch.”
Once they’d staggered up the five flights to their dingy little apartment where Mary had always planned to put up curtains but had never had time, Don suddenly caved in with fatigue and threw himself on the couch and fell asleep without taking off his clothes. Mary tried to rouse him but gave it up. She unlaced his shoes for him and threw a blanket over him and got into bed herself and tried to sleep.
She was staring wide awake, she was counting old pairs of trousers, torn suits of woolly underwear, old armyshirts with the sleeves cut off, socks with holes in them that didn’t match. She was seeing the rickety children with puffy bellies showing through their rags, the scrawny women with uncombed hair and hands distorted with work, the boys with their heads battered and bleeding from the clubs of the Coal and Iron Police, the photograph of a miner’s body shot through with machinegun bullets. She got up and took two or three swigs from a bottle of gin she kept in the medicinecloset in the bathroom. The gin burned her throat. Coughing she went back to bed and went off into a hot dreamless sleep.
Towards morning Don woke her getting into the bed. He kissed her. “Darling, I’ve set the alarm for seven… Be sure to get me up. I’ve got a very important committeemeeting… Be sure and do it.” He went off to sleep again right away like a child. She lay beside his bigboned lanky body, listening to his regular breathing, feeling happy and safe there in the bed with him.
Eddy Spellman got through with his truck again and distributed his stuff to several striking locals U.M.W. in the Pittsburgh district, although he had a narrow squeak when the deputies tried to ambush him near Greensburg. They’d have nabbed him if a guy he knew who was a bootlegger hadn’t tipped him off. The same bootlegger helped him out when he skidded into a snowdrift on the hill going down into Johnstown on the way back. He was laughing about it as he helped Mary pack up the new shipment. “He wanted to give me some liquor… He’s a good feller, do you know it, Miss Mary?… Tough kinder… that racket hardens a feller up… but a prince when you know him…‘Hell, no, Ed,’ his name’s Eddy too, I says to him when he tried to slip me a pint, ‘I ain’t goin’ to take a drink until after the revolution and then I’ll be ridin’ so high I won’t need to.’” Mary laughed. “I guess we all ought to do that, Eddy… But I feel so tired and discouraged at night sometimes.” “Sure,” said Eddy, turning serious. “It gits you down thinkin’ how they got all the guns an’ all the money an’ we ain’t got nothin’.”
“One thing you’re going to have, Comrade Spellman, is a pair of warm gloves and a good overcoat before you make the next trip.”
His freckled face turned red to the roots of his red hair. “Honest, Miss Mary, I don’t git cold. To tell the truth the motor heats up so much in that old pile of junk it keeps me warm in the coldest weather… After the next trip we got to put a new clutch in her and that’ll take more jack than we kin spare from the milk… I tell you things are bad up there in the coalfields this winter.”
“But those miners have got such wonderful spirit,” said Mary.
“The trouble is, Miss Mary, you kin only keep your spirit up a certain length of time on an empty stumick.”
That evening Don came by to the office to get Mary for supper. He was very cheerful and his gaunt bony face had more color in it than usual. “Well, little girl, what would you think of moving up to Pittsburgh? After the plenum I may go out to do some organizing in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mestrovich says they need somebody to pep ’em up a little.” Eddy Spellman looked up from the bale of clothes he was tying up. “Take it from me, Comrade Stevens, they sure do.”
Mary felt a chill go through her. Don must have noticed the pallor spreading over her face. “We won’t take any risks,” he added hurriedly. “Those miners take good care of a feller, don’t they, Eddy?” “They sure do… Wherever the locals is strong you’ll be safer than you are right here in New York.” “Anyway,” said Mary, her throat tight and dry, “if you’ve got to go you’ve got to go.”
“You two go out an’ eat,” said Eddy. “I’ll finish up… I’m bunkin’ here anyway. Saves the price of a flop… You feed Miss Mary up good, Comrade Stevens. We don’t want her gettin’ sick… If all the real partymembers worked like she does we’d have… hell, we’d have the finest kind of a revolution by the spring of the year.”
They went out laughing, and walked down to Bleecker Street and settled happily at a table in an Italian restaurant and ordered up the seventyfivecent dinner and a bottle of wine. “You’ve got a great admirer in Eddy,” Don said, smiling at her across the table.
A couple of weeks later Mary came home one icy winter evening to find Don busy packing his grip. She couldn’t help letting out a cry, her nerves were getting harder and harder to control. “Oh, Don, it’s not Pittsburgh yet?” Don shook his head and went on packing. When he had closed up his wicker suitcase he came over to her and put his arm round her shoulder. “I’ve got to go across to the other side with… you know who… essential party business.”
“Oh, Don, I’d love to go too. I’ve never been to Russia or anywhere.” “I’ll only be gone a month. We’re sailing at midnight… and Mary darling… if anybody asks after me I’m in Pittsburgh, see?” Mary started to cry. “I’ll have to say I don’t know where you are… I know I can’t ever get away with a lie.” “Mary dear, it’ll just be a few days… don’t be a little silly.” Mary smiled through her tears. “But I am… I’m an awful little silly.” He kissed her and patted her gently on the back. Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried out of the room with a big checked cap pulled down over his eyes.
Mary walked up and down the narrow room with her lips twitching, fighting to keep down the hysterical sobs. To give herself something to do she began to plan how she could fix up the apartment so that it wouldn’t look so dreary when Don came back. She pulled out the couch and pushed it across the window like a windowseat. Then she pulled the table out in front of it and grouped the chairs round the table. She made up her mind she’d paint the woodwork white and get turkeyred for the curtains.
Next morning she was in the middle of drinking her coffee out of a cracked cup without a saucer, feeling bitterly lonely in the empty apartment when the telephone rang. At first she didn’t recognize whose voice it was. She was confused and kept stammering, “Who is it, please?” into the receiver. “But, Mary,” the voice was saying in an exasperated tone, “you must know who I am. It’s Ben Compton… bee ee enn… Ben. I’ve got to see you about something. Where could I meet you? Not at your place.” Mary tried to keep her voice from sounding stiff and chilly. “I’ve got to be uptown today. I’ve got to have lunch with a woman who may give some money to the miners. It’s a horrible waste of time but I can’t help it. She won’t give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two thirty?” “Better say inside… It’s about zero out today. I just got up out of bed from the flu.”