And, in the second, didn't really need the balm of his lights as much as usual: not only was he especially soothed by the muted pitch of worry that rose from each of the tables blending with the rising smoke--"Teddy, goddammit, I tell ya . . . somethin' is haywire here. . . ." "Yes sir, Mr. Evenwrite." "Somethin' terrible wrong . . ."--rose blending to hang congealed and blue all over the room . . . but he was already in a delicious state of thrilled anticipation owing to a phone call he had received that afternoon from Jonathan Draeger: after telling him that he was calling long distance from Eugene and asking that he do him a favor--"I'll be there this evening; would you please see if you can keep Floyd Evenwrite indoors and out of trouble until I arrive?"--Draeger had put Teddy in a heart-thumping swirl by adding, "We'll show these muscleheads just what a little thoughtful patience can accomplish, won't we, Ted?"
All the rest of that afternoon and evening that tiny intimacy had glowed in Teddy's chest. We, Draeger had said; we! Such a word, coming from such a man, could outshine all the neons in Oregon!
Evenwrite had come in after supper, a little before seven, with his face redder than usual and his breath laced with the sweet smell of brandy. "Yeah, somethin' wrong . . ." he announced again, knotting his features terribly.
"What's that, Mr. Evenwrite?"
"Haw?" Evenwrite looked up, blinking stupidly.
"You said something about something being wrong . . ."
"Hell yes, somethin' wrong. With this drink, I was talkin' about! What'd you think I was talkin' about?"
In response Teddy lowered his lashes and gazed at the wienie-fingered, rusty-knuckled paw resting on the richly grained surface of the bar. Beside this monstrosity his own curled hand--eternally bluish from so many hours in the wash-water cleaning glasses, the flesh appearing to approach transparency the way meat does after pickling--looked even bluer and smaller than usual. He waited timidly, face bent in an attitude of abject and persevering embarrassment. "What about it, sir? the drink . . . ?"
"Well, right this minute it's empty is what about it. You could fill it back up for a start. That'd help some."
Teddy brought out a bottle and refilled the glass; Evenwrite picked it up and started to walk back to his table.
"Oh. That will be fifty cents, Mr. Evenwrite."
"Fifty cents! You mean to tell me you're askin' money for this stuff? Teddy, I wasn't planning to drink it, I was goin' into the head and give myself a shampoo with it."
Teddy looked back down. The men at Evenwrite's table laughed, always welcoming the comic interlude Teddy brought to their serious, grim, down-to-business discussions. Then Evenwrite guffawed himself and slapped a four-bit piece down on the bartop as though squashing a bug. Teddy picked it up gently and carried it to the cash register, relishing an exquisite and curious new fear just garnered from the emotional clutter of Evenwrite's face, This is one thing, Mr. Draeger, that sets you apart from me and the muscleheads both: carefully rolling the new specimen over and over with a connoisseur's studied appreciation. . . . I can just escape fear; you can create it.
At all the tables grouped about the table where Evenwrite was holding forth, the conversation followed essentially the same lines, starting with they'd never thought it of Hank Stamper, double-crossing his neighbors like he's done--"Old Henry, maybe, but Hank's always been a pretty good ol' boy himself "--on to "What the devil? You can't expect to get a peach offn a thorn-apple bush, can you? Just because Hank ain't all the time juiced out tellin' about how you got to have a armor-plated hide to make a go of this business, like the old man all the time is, don't mean he ain't blood of blood and flesh of flesh." And eventually on to "There's no two ways about it that I can see: Hank Stamper's indicated where he stands and he's just got to be showed the error of his ways."
Evenwrite led the charge in this last maneuver. "And I for one say," he shouted, jumping to his feet, momentarily enlisting the room's attention with eyes glazed and red as hard candy and a nose plugged near to bursting, "say that a bunj of us go out there and put Mister Hank Stamper straighd!" He wiped his nose on his sleeve and added, "Right by god gnow!"
There was a brief flurry of agreement, "Yeah, straight . . . right now . . ." but Teddy knew the bar was too comfortably warm and bright and the night outside too miserably cold and wet for this flurry to flare into action. It would take a lot more talk and drink before Evenwrite could lead any sort of mob out into the rain. Still, the ways things were going, he did wish--
The door opened and, like an answer to Teddy's unfinished wish, Draeger entered. Hardly anyone but Teddy noticed, the others devoting attention to Evenwrite's bloodshot eyes and plugnosed speech. Draeger removed his overcoat and hat and hung them by the door, then seated himself at a small empty table close to the oil heater. He held up a finger and said, "One," silently to Teddy, then turned to watch Evenwrite's neck heave and swell in his plea for action.
"We been beatin' too long around the bush with them, tryna be legal, and fair . . . well, I ask you, they been fair with us? They treated us ride?"
There was more yelling and some scraping of chairs. But Teddy, carrying whisky and water, peeked from beneath his lashes at Draeger's pleasant, understanding face and saw that Draeger was no more worried about being trampled in a riot than he was. If anybody here is going to whip up a riot, it is not going to be Floyd Evenwrite. He placed the glasses on the table; Draeger tasted the liquor and smiled up at Teddy.
"My old man," Evenwrite was shouting, "always said that if the workingman wants something in this world then the workingman has to get it. . . . Ride? Goddab ride . . ."
Draeger swallowed the rest of his drink, then sat, studying the facets of colored light in the shot glass while Evenwrite banged about the tables, cursing and taunting the men, red-faced with diluted liquor and imagined power.
"So whadya say? Who says we get with it? Huh? Huh?" Most of them said yeah, get with it, but none of them moved. "Whadya say! Whadya say! Ride on out there and we'll--" He blinked, concentrating fiercely, damn it all, he had for a shake there had his finger on it. "And we will just the whole bunch of us we'll--"
"Swim across the river like a pack of beavers?" The heads turned from Evenwrite to Draeger. "Stand on the bank and throw rocks? Floyd, you sound like you caught a cold somewhere."
Evenwrite refused to turn to the voice. He wanted to ignore it now, just as he had been expecting it all evening. He snatched up his empty glass and glared at it as though the calm, deep words were issuing from its crystal mouth.
"Use your head, Floyd," Draeger continued. "You can't stir up these people into running out to that house like a bunch of fools out of a cowboy movie, even if we could find a legal way, because in the first place--"
"Legal again!" Evenwrite shouted at the glass. "What the shit's legal got to do?"
"--because," Draeger went on, "in the first place we couldn't get across the river as a group. Unless you think Mr. Stamper would ferry us across two or three at a time. Now, I don't really know the man"--he smiled about at the room--"but from all I've heard I don't think I'd care to go across as an emissary and request that he bring enough of us across to make up a mob. Of course, Floyd may be so inclined. I hear he's more skilled at this sort of thing than I am."
The men laughed uncertainly, puzzled by the calm tact of this man. They waited, watching him at his solitary table toying with his glass. But when he didn't go on, the crowd turned its attention back to Evenwrite, who still stood clutching his empty glass. Evenwrite felt the attention burn at his back: balls. He'd been going good before that bastard had showed up; real good. But some way Draeger had made him the fool again, though damned if he could see how. He tried to study the fact for a moment, then gave up and vented his frustration on Teddy by demanding a free glass on account of dammit for all the juice he'd throwed down in there tonight if it'd been real stuff he'd be drunk on his ear, now ain't that so? Without comment, Teddy refilled the glass. Evenwrite drank it with a gulp, not even closing his eyes, then sm
acked his lips thoughtfully. "Pigeon piss," he decided and spat in the direction of the spittoon. There was a little wave of laughter, still uncertain. The men looked back and forth from their president to their representative, waiting for the next move. Draeger seemed unaware of the silence that had risen up after his entrance; he peered through the little glass he twisted in his fingers, his eyes patient as his smile. Evenwrite leaned against the bar. He knew he was on the spot. Draeger had made it his move. He rubbed his neck and finally broke the quiet by throwing the glass at the brass pot wired to the corner of the bar and shouting "Pigeon piss" again. "That ain't whisky, that's pure hundred-fifty-proof pigeon piss." There was more laughter and he turned then toward Draeger, confident again. He was leaning slightly, eyes very bright. "Okay, Jonathan Bailey Draeger, since you're so fuckin' smart let's hear what you say we should do. You called this walkout the first place. Ain't that so? Since you're so smart, okay let's hear what you're gonna do to get us outa this mess. I'm jus' a dumb-ass sawyer! I mean, nobody pays us dumb-asses to think. Since you're so smart--"
Draeger brought the glass down on the cocktail napkin on the Formica table top; there was a muffled yet resonant click, sounding at once distant and very near, like a click heard under water. "If you'll just sit down and take it easy, Floyd--"
"Ho ho. Don't you Floyd old boy me, Jonathan Bailey Draeger. Legal? All right, if you want to be legal then, you know and I know what we gotta do. Maybe we beat our gums here the rest the night but we know! An' me hollering to go out there after Stamper was a dumb-ass thing, sure . . . but not no more dumb-ass than you suckin' us into this strike none of us wanted!"
"Floyd, to hear you tell it last August you boys were all starving to death."
"Last August you told us we'd settle without a walkout!"
"Are you scared to gut it out, Floyd? Scared you might miss a couple of paychecks?"
Draeger still spoke so softly that it was difficult to tell if the voice came from him or not. Evenwrite's voice grew louder to overpower the silence that Draeger had brought down on the room. "No, I ain't scared to miss a couple of paychecks! I done it before. All of us have. We've struck before and we've gutted it out. We've gutted it out since the days before the Wobs came to back us up. And we'll do it again, won't we, boys?" He looked about at the men, nodding. The men nodded with him, watching Draeger. "You're damn right. We ain't scared to gut it or miss a couple paychecks, but we ain't scared to back off when we're dead whipped, neither!"
"Floyd, if you'll--"
"And legally, if you want to be that way about it, we are whipped! Whipped comin' an' goin'." He stopped speaking to Draeger and turned toward the men again, wiping his nose. "I been wantin' to cash it a long time now. It was the wrong time of year to walk out; we all knew that--hell, middle of winter, not a whole lot in the strike fund--but Draeger figured if he could just swing this one he was on his way to him a big spot, make a goddam king or something of hisself . . . so he got us--"
"Floyd . . ."
"Draeger, if you're so fuckin' smart--"
"Floyd."
Click. Again that light, restrained touch of the glass against the table, as light as a hammer cocking. The heads swung back to Draeger. I see now; now I understand. . . . From behind his bar Teddy marveled at the man's power and timing. . . . You know how to wait. As soon as you started speaking . . . watch these idiots draw in toward you without leaving their places, straining without motion toward your voice as metal particles strain in toward a magnet . . .
"Floyd . . . doesn't the foreman from the Stamper mill, Orland Stamper, live right next door to you?"
... Straining in to you without even moving; it doesn't make any difference what you say. Because you are one of the forces yourself, a force, and that's what matters. Not what you say. Like Walker the Healing Preacher is sometimes a force. But not that way either, because you know more than Brother Walker and his God put together . . .
"And Sitkins, you and your brother, I heard you both have children in the same class as some of the Stamper children. It seems I recall hearing that. Those kids are just kids, aren't they, just like your kids?"
. . . You know what it is--the cold force in the dark--that makes people move. And that you don't have to have all those drums and guitars and organ music to make the idiots dance. You know that Brother Walker's God is just a straw God, a make-do doll to wave in the face of the true All-Powerful. . . .
"And the Stamper wives, aren't they just women? Worried just like any women about how their house looks for company? What the new hairdo is?--and, boy oh boy, have you men seen some of those styles?--just like any woman, the Stamper wives?"
. . . A make-do deity doll, not even as powerful as the other make-do gods like What the Fool Next Door Thinks, and The Great Things to Be Done . . . none of them a fraction as powerful or terrible as the Force that created them, the Fear that created them.
"Men . . . Floyd . . . there are one or two things to keep in mind: that it doesn't make any difference what their name is--they want the same things from life that you want, the same things you men fought for when we put this union together, the same things you want now . . . because it's natural."
. . . . Natural for animals to bunch together for protection. You don't need drums and guitars. No. All you need is just to have people around with the natural fear, like all a magnet needs to be a force is just the pieces of iron to pull against.
"I take my stand behind the human heart, not alongside violence . . ."
... Not be right or wrong or good or bad, just be pulling. In a minute the idiots won't even be listening, they'll just be pulling. They don't have to think. Just be afraid naturally and pulling together. Like specks of mercury rolling into the big piece. Like little specks of mercury rolling into bigger specks and then bigger and then just one piece, and nothing to be scared about or hurt about because you're just a piece of a bigger piece getting bigger rolling across the land into an ocean of mercury . . .
"So here is what I've been doing the last four days, over in Eugene--toward the benefit of all, with no violence, no bloodshed . . . I've been appropriating funds from the union treasury . . ."
... And you know all this, Mr. Draeger. It is the thing that makes you special. And you have the courage to use it. I can only stand awed by the true All-Powerful; you can use it. You are beautiful . . .
"What are you driving at, Draeger?" Evenwrite asked, feeling suddenly tired again.
"Not quite all we need, perhaps," Draeger continued as though he hadn't heard Evenwrite, "but I am sure some local businessman with a little capital and a shrewd investment eye can raise the rest of the money. . . ."
"Muddy for what, Draeger?"
Draeger smiled sadly at Floyd. "You've got a dilly of one, haven't you, Floyd? Too bad; especially since we have to take us another little joyride up the river and have another talk with Mr. Stamper."
"Now just a goddam minute! I know this man, he's less likely now than he was a week ago to change his--" Evenwrite squinted at Draeger. "Money for what? I asked."
"We are going to buy the Stamper Enterprises, Floyd, lock, stock and barrel, kit and kaboo--"
"He won't sell," Evenwrite said, a little desperately. "Hank Stamper? Never . . ."
"I think he will. I talked to him on the phone. I quoted some figures that he would be a fool to pass up--"
"He said yes? Hank Stamper?"
"Not absolutely, no, but I don't see what would stop him. He'll never get a better offer." Draeger turned back to the others, shrugging. "The price will be a little stiff, men, but he had us by the short hairs, as Floyd puts it. It will still work out to our advantage: the business will be owned locally, in conjunction with the union; the investors will share in the profits; the Wakonda Pacific will be over a barrel. . . ."
Teddy listened through his thoughts to the muffled, distant voice and fell in love from behind his barricade of rainbows.
Evenwrite leaned against the bar, stunned completel
y sober. He didn't listen to the rest of the excited questions, or Draeger's optimistic plans. For a while, the prospect of another river trip almost jolted him out of his stupor, but when he raised his head to protest he saw all the other men so enthusiastic that he couldn't bring himself to speak. And when Draeger left in the direction of Mama Olson's he put on his coat and docilely followed along.
On the street outside he shook his head and repeated, "Hank Stamper . . . just won't sell."
"What difference?" Draeger said happily. "We aren't even going to make an offer."
"Then where we going?"
"Just for a walk, Floyd. A stroll. I just thought folks would be more inclined to believe we made that offer if we strolled down toward the docks. . . ."
"Believe? What are you talking about? Hank Stamper'll never believe we went up to his place just because we--"
"But he'll be the only one who won't believe it, Floyd." He chuckled, confident. "By the way, do you play cribbage? Fine game for two. Come on; I have a board up in my hotel room. . . . There should be just about enough time to teach you while we supposedly have another 'joyride.' "
And back in the bar Teddy, standing in his spot by the window, is the only one to see them double back from the docks and duck into the side door of the hotel. You are a force, a force. He nods slowly when the light switches on in one of the hotel's upstairs rooms. Why, it's almost like Mr. Draeger wanted him to see the ruse; You know I always stand by this window . . . it's a real confidence! "We," you said to me . . . "we"--and feels his plump little body stretch nearly to bursting as his initial admiration and awe swells to love and beyond--to adulation, to worship.
When my father mustered out of the Navy in 1945 we moved from a fair-sized town near Mare Island, where he had been stationed, to the "Old Jarnaggan Place" in the Willamette Valley--a two-story farmhouse thirty miles from Eugene, where Daddy had a job, fifteen miles from Coburg, where I would attend the third grade, and a good million light-years from the highway, where the nearest other human being could be found. Electricity had penetrated as far as the kitchen and living room, but to illuminate any of the rest of the house one needed to go through the entire Coleman lantern bit, replete with ash mantles, a nickel-plated handpump, and white gasoline which was considered too dangerous for a third-grader who should be old enough by now to sleep in the dark, for goodness' sakes! And my second-floor bedroom was indeed dark. Damned dark. A back-country night in a one-window room during a tar-bucket rain, in the sort of dark where nothing at all happens when you open and close your eyes. There is simply no light. But, like water, this thick dark affords tremendous conductivity to sounds of unknown sources. And after I had lain three or four bulge-eyed hours of my first night in my new bed, I began to perceive one of these very sounds: something hard, heavy, and horrible, rumbling and thudding insanely from one side of the hall to the other, coming steadily closer. My head lifted from the pillow. I stared in the direction of my door, filling the void with demented monster crabs and drunken robots as the noise came relentlessly on through my door, into my room. . . . (I recall thinking when I discovered Edgar Allan Poe's world some years after: Yes; this is sure the way it sometimes is!) I lay with my head lifted. I didn't call out; I felt totally bereft of voice, the way you feel when you try calling out of the confines of a dream. And as I waited an odd, recurring light at my window began to illuminate the room--a brief, quick glow, separated by long intervals of identically timed darkness. The rain had stopped and the clouds lifted, allowing the sweeping beam of a beacon from a cropduster's airfield to swing across my upstairs window (I traced down this mystery light weeks later); from the stroboscope impressions given me by this periodic flash I was able to solve my mystery: a small rat had scored a large walnut from the storeroom down the hall and was trying to corral it against something solid so he could gnaw through its stubborn shell. The nut kept skittering away from the rat's teeth, and the rat kept chasing after it and rolling it back against the wooden wall, which amplified his gnawing like a sounding board. Teamed thus, the two of them had worked their way from the storeroom, along the baseboard, all the way to my open door. Just a mouse, that light showed me, just a little old field rat. I breathed and let my head fall back to the pillow: just a mouse chewing a nut. That's all. That's all it--But what's this light that keeps flashing past like a ghost or something flying round and around the house looking for a place to get in? . . . What is this awful light?