"I learned it from an exchange student. I used to be Jody."
Dinner is called and there's confusion, there's jostling, everyone wants near the platform. The ears aren't what they used to be. There is a seating plan, with place cards set out, but nobody looks. Place cards at the Anarchists' Convention? I manage to squeeze in next to Sophie.
First on the agenda is fruit cup, then speeches, then dinner, then more speeches. Carmen Marcovicci wants us to go get our own fruit cup. It makes her uneasy, she says, being waited on. People want, they should get up and get it themselves.
A couple minutes of mumble-grumble, then someone points out that we'd be putting the two hotel lackeys in charge of the meal out of a job. It's agreed, they'll serve. You could always reason with Carmen.
Then Harriet Foote questions the grapes in the fruit cup. The boycott is over, we tell her, grapes are fine. In fact grapes were always fine — it was the labor situation that was no good, not the fruit.
"Well I'm not eating mine," she says, blood pressure climbing toward the danger point, "it would be disloyal."
The Wrath of the People. That's what Brickman used to call it in his articles, in his harangues, in his three-hour walking diatribes. Harriet still has it, and Carmen and Weiss and Sophie and Bill Kinney on his clear days and Brickman had it to the end. It's a wonderful quality, but when you're over seventy and haven't eaten since breakfast it has its drawbacks.
Baker speaks first, apologizing for the site and the hour and the weather and the Hundred Years' War. He congratulates the long travelers — Odum from L.A., Kinney from Montana, Pappas from Chicago, Mrs. Axelrod all the way in from Yonkers. He apologizes that our next scheduled speaker, Mikey Dolan, won't be with us. He apologizes for not having time to prepare a eulogy, but it was so sudden -
More mumble-grumble, this being the first we've heard about Mikey. Sophie is crying, but she's not the sort you offer your shoulder or reach for the Kleenex. If steel had tears, Brickman used to say. They had their battles, Brickman and Sophie, those two years together. '37 and '38. Neither of them known as a compromiser, both with healthy throwing arms, once a month there's a knock and it's Sophie come to borrow more plates. I worked for money at the moviehouse, I always had plates.
The worst was when you wouldn't see either of them for a week. Phil Rapf was living below them then and you'd see him in Washington Square, eight o'clock in the morning. Phil who'd sleep through the Revolution itself if it came before noon.
"I can't take it," he'd say. "They're at it already. In the morning, in the noontime, at night. At least when they're fighting the plaster doesn't fall."
Less than two years it lasted. But of all of them, before and after, it was Brickman left his mark on her. That hurts.
Bud Odum is up next, his Wisconsin accent creeping toward Oklahoma, twanging on about "good red-blooded American men and women" and I get a terrible feeling he's going to break into "The Ballad of Bob LaFollette," when war breaks out at the far end of the table. In the initial shuffle Allie Zaitz was sitting down next to Fritz Groh and it's fifteen minutes before the shock of recognition. Allie has lost all his hair from the X-ray treatments, and Fritz never had any. More than ever they're looking like twins.
"You," says Allie, "you from the Dockworkersl"
"And you from that yellow rag. They haven't put you away from civilized people?"
"They let you in here? You an anarchist?"
"In the fullest definition of the word. Which you wouldn't know. What was that coloring book you wrote for?"
At the top of their voices, in the manner of old Lefties. What, old — in the manner we've always had, damn the decibels and full speed ahead. Baker would apologize but he's not near enough to the microphone, and Bud Odum is just laughing. There's still something genuine about the boy, Greek sailor cap and all.
"Who let this crank in here? We've been infiltratedl"
"Point of order! Point of order!"
What Allie is thinking with point of order I don't know, but the lady from the name tags gets them separated, gives each a Barnard girl to record their spewings about the other. Something Fritz said at a meeting, something Allie wrote about it, centuries ago. We don't forget.
Bud gets going again and it seems that last year they weren't prepared with Brickman's eulogy, so Bud will do the honors now. I feel eyes swiveling, a little muttered chorus of "Leoleoleo" goes through the room. Sophie knew, of course, and conned me into what she thought would be good for me. Once again.
First Bud goes into what a fighter Brickman was, tells how he took on Union City, New Jersey, single-handed, about the time he organized an entire truckload of scabs with one speech, turning them around right under the company's nose. He can still rouse an audience, Bud, even with the pipes gone, and soon they're popping up around the table with memories. Little Pappas, who we never thought would survive the beating he took one May Day scuffle, little oneeyed, broken-nosed Pappas stands and tells of Brickman saving the mimeograph machine when they burned our office on 27th Street. And Sam Karnes, ghost-pale, like the years in prison bleached even his blood, is standing, shaky, with the word on Brickman's last days. Tubes running out of him, fluids dripping into him, still Brickman agitates with the hospital orderlies, organizes with the cleaning staff. Then Sophie takes the floor, talking about spirit, how Brickman had it, how Brickman was it, spirit of our cause, more spirit sometimes than judgment, and again I feel the eyes, hear the Leoleoleo and there I am on my feet.
"We had our troubles," I say, "Brickman and I. But always I knew his heart was in the right place."
Applause, tears, and I sit down. It's a sentimental moment. Of course, it isn't true. If Brickman had a heart it was a wellkept secret. He was a machine, an express train flying the black flag. But it's a sentimental moment, the words come out.
Everybody is making nice then, the old friendly juices flowing, and Baker has to bring up business. A master of tact, a genius of timing. A vote — do we elect next year's Committee before dinner or after?
"Why spoil dinner?" says one camp.
"Nobody will be left awake after," says the other. "Let's get it out of the way."
They always started small, the rifts. A title, a phrase, a point of procedure. The Chicago Fire began with a spark.
It pulls the scab off, the old animosities, the bickerings, come back to the surface. One whole section of the table splits off into a violent debate over the merits of syndicalism, another forms a faction for elections during dinner, Weiss wrestles Baker for the microphone and Sophie shakes her head sadly.
"Why, why, why? Always they argue," she says, "always they fight." -
I could answer, I devoted half of one of my studies to it, but who asks?
While the argument heats another little girl comes over with used-to-be-Jody.
"She says you're Leo Gold."
"I confess."
"The Leo Gold?"
"There's another?"
"I read Anarchism and the Will to Love."
My one turkey, and she's read it. "So you're the one."
"I didn't realize you were still alive."
"It's a matter of seconds."
I'm feeling low. Veins are standing out in temples, old hearts straining, distemper epidemic. And the sound, familiar, but with a new, futile edge.
I've never been detached enough to recognize the sound so exactly before. It's a raw-throated sound, a grating, insistent sound, a sound born out of all the insults swallowed, the battles lost, out of all the smothered dreams and desires. Three thousand collective years of frustration in the room, turning inward, a cancer of frustration. It's the sound of parents brawling each other because they can't feed their kids, the sound of prisoners preying on each other because the guards are out of reach, the sound of a terribly deep despair. No quiet desperation for us, not while we have a voice left. Over an hour it lasts, the sniping, the shouting, the accusations and countercharges. I want to eat. I want to go home. I want to cry.