You could tell these so-called organisers were from out of town, said Reenie, who was telling us about all this as we sat at the kitchen table. (We'd stopped having meals in the dining room, because Father had stopped eating there. He was barricaded in his turret; Reenie took a tray up.) Those roughnecks had no sense of what was decent, bringing the two of us into it like that, when everyone knew we had nothing to do with anything. She told us to pay no attention, which was easier said than done.
There were still some who were loyal to Father. At the meeting, we heard, there had been disagreements, then voices raised, then scuffling. Tempers were set loose. One man was kicked in the head, and carted off to the hospital with concussion. It was one of the strikers-they were calling themselvesthe strikers, now-but this injury was blamed on the strikers themselves, because once you started that sort of disruption, who could tell where it would end?
Better not to start. Better to keep your mouth shut. Much better.
Callie Fitzsimmons came to see Father. She was very worried about him, she said. She was worried that he was going down the drain. Morally, is what she meant. How could he treat his workers in this cavalier and also cheapskate fashion? Father told her to face reality. He called her a Job's comforter. He also said, Who put you up to this, one of your pinko pals? She said she had come on her own hook, out of love, because although a capitalist he'd always been a decent man, but now she found he'd turned into a heartless plutocrat. He said you couldn't be a plutocrat if you were broke. She said he could liquidate his assets. He said his assets weren't worth much more than her ass, which as far as he could tell she'd been giving away for nothing to anybody who'd asked. She said he hadn't scorned the free handouts. He said yes, but the hidden costs had been too high-first all the food in his house for her artistic pals, then his blood and now his soul. She called him a bourgeois reactionary. He called her a corpse fly. By that time they were shouting at each other. Then there was a slamming of doors, and a car skidded away down the gravel, and that was the end of that.
Was Reenie glad or sorry? Sorry. She hadn't liked Callie, but she'd got used to her, and Callie had been good for Father once upon a time. Who would replace her? Some other floozie, and better the devil you know.
The next week there was a call for a general strike, to show solidarity with the Chase and Sons workers. All stores and businesses must close, was the edict. All public services must be shut down. The telephones, the mail delivery. No milk, no bread, no ice. (Who was issuing these edicts? No one thought they were really coming from the man who actually spoke the words of them. This man claimed to be local, right from our own town, and was once thought to be-he was a Morton, a Morgan, something like that-but surely it had become clear that he was not local, not underneath it. He couldn't have been, to behave like that. Who was his grandfather, anyway?)
So it was not this man. He was not the brains behind it, said Reenie, because he did not have any brains to begin with. Dark forces were at work.
Laura was worried about Alex Thomas. He was mixed up in it somehow, she said. She knew he was. He was bound to be, according to his lights.
In the early afternoon of that same day, Richard Griffen arrived at Avilion in a car, with two other cars accompanying him. They were large cars, sleek and low-slung. There were five other men altogether, four of them quite big, in dark overcoats and grey fedoras. Richard Griffen and one of the men went into Father's study, along with Father. Two of the others posted themselves at the house doors, front and back, and two went off somewhere in one of the expensive cars. Laura and I watched the comings and goings of the cars from Laura's bedroom window. We'd been told to keep out of the way, which meant out of earshot as well. When we asked Reenie what was going on, she looked worried, and said our guess was as good as hers, but she was keeping her ear to the track.
Richard Griffen did not stay to dinner. When he left, two of the cars went with him. The third one stayed behind, and three of the big men stayed with it. They took up unobtrusive residence in the former chauffeur's quarters, over the garage.
They were detectives, said Reenie. They must be. That was why they always had their overcoats on: it hid the guns, which they kept in their armpits. The guns were revolvers. She knew this from her various magazines. She said they were there to protect us, and if we saw anyone out of the ordinary creeping around the garden at night-besides these three men, of course-we were to scream.
The next day there was rioting, along the main streets of the town. Many men present at it had never been seen before, or if they had been seen, they hadn't been remembered. Who'd remember a tramp? But some of them hadn't been tramps, they'd been international agitators in disguise. They'd been spying, all along. How had they got here so quickly? On the tops of trains, it was said. That was how men like them travelled around.
The rioting started at a rally outside the town hall. First there were speeches in which goons and company thugs were mentioned; then Father, rendered in cardboard and wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar-not things he ever did-was burned in effigy, to loud cheering. Two rag dolls in frilly pink dresses were soaked in kerosene and tossed onto the flames as well. They were supposed to be us-Laura and me, said Reenie. Jokes had been made about them being hot little dollies. (Laura's strolls around town with Alex had not gone unremarked.) It was Ron Hincks who'd told her this, said Reenie, thinking she should know. He said the two of us shouldn't go downtown right now because feelings were running high and you never knew. He said we should stay at Avilion, where we would be safe. He said it was a crying shame about the dolls, and he'd like to get his hands on whoever had cooked that one up.
Those main-street stores and businesses that had refused to close down had their windows broken. Then the ones that had closed also had their windows broken. After that, looting took place, and matters got severely out of hand. The newspaper was invaded and the offices wrecked; Elwood Murray was roughed up, and the machines in the printing shop at the back were smashed. His darkroom escaped, but his camera did not. It was a mournful time for him, which we heard all about, many times, afterwards.
That night the button factory caught on fire. Flames shot out the windows on the lower floor: I couldn't see them from my room, but the fire truck clanged past, going to the rescue. I was dismayed and frightened, of course, but I have to admit there was something exciting about this as well. As I was listening to the clanging, and to the distant shouts from the same direction, I heard someone coming up the back stairs. I thought it might be Reenie, but it wasn't. It was Laura; she had her outdoor coat on.
"Where have you been?" I asked her. "We're supposed to stay put. Father has enough worries without you wandering off."
"I was only in the conservatory," she said. "I was praying. I needed a quiet place."
They did manage to put out the fire, but a lot of damage had been done to the building. That was the first report. Then Mrs. Hillcoate arrived, out of breath and bearing clean laundry, and was allowed in past the guards. Arson, she said: they'd found the cans of gasoline. The night watchman was lying dead on the floor. He had a bump on his head.