Nilson touched the desk here and there with his fingertips. “Even the people you’re trying to help will hate you most of the time. Do you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why do you want to join, then?”

Jim’s grey eyes half closed in perplexity. At last he said, “In the jail there were some Party men. They talked to me. Everything’s been a mess, all my life. Their lives weren’t messes. They were working toward something. I want to work toward something. I feel dead. I thought I might get alive again.”

Jim jumped up and stood in front of the bench and whipped the leaf skeleton across his palm. “I’m getting to this: In that cell were five men all raised in about the same condition. Some of them worse, even. And while there was anger in them, it wasn’t the same kind of anger. They didn’t hate a boss or a butcher. They hated the whole system of bosses, but that was a different thing. It wasn’t the same kind of anger. And there was something else, Mac. The hopelessness wasn’t in them. They were quiet, and they were working; but in the back of every mind there was conviction that sooner or later they would win their way out of the system they hated. I tell you, there was a kind of peacefulness about those men.”

Lean-face burst out angrily. “Know what they’re payin’, fella? Fifteen cents, fifteen lousy cents!"

“Well, what do you want?” Mac demanded. “Jesus Christ, man! You ain’t got the nerve to say you want to eat? You can eat an apple while you’re workin’. All them nice apples!” His tone grew hard. “S’pose we don’t pick them apples?”

Lean-face cried, “We got to pick ’em. Spent every Goddamn cent gettin’ here.”

Mac repeated softly, “All them nice apples. If we don’t pick ’em, they’ll rot.”

“If we don’t pick ’em, somebody else will.”

“S’pose we didn’t let nobody else pick?” Mac said.

The men about the fire grew tense. “You mean—strike?” Lean-face asked.

Mac laughed. “I don’t mean nothin’.”

“Sure they liked it. Men always like to work together. There’s a hunger in men to work together. Do you know that ten men can lift nearly twelve times as big a load as one man can? It only takes a little spark to get them going. Most of the time they’re suspicious, because every time someone gets ’em working in a group the profit of their work is taken away from them; but wait till they get working for themselves. Tonight the work concerned them, it was their job; and see how well they did it.”

Jim said, “You didn’t need all that cloth. Why did you tell London to burn it?”

“Look, Jim. Don’t you see? Every man who gave part of his clothes felt that the work was his own. They all feel responsible for that baby. It’s theirs, because something from them went to it. To give back the cloth would cut them out. There’s no better way to make men part of a movement than to have them give something to it. I bet they all feel fine right now.”

A truck went by, carrying off the filled boxes. The old man continued, “I was in the north woods when the Wobblies was raising hell. I’m a top-faller, a damn good one. Maybe you noticed how I take to a tree at my age. Well, I had hopes then. ’Course the Wobblies done some good, used to be there was no crappers but a hole in the ground, and no place to take a bath. The meat used to spoil. Well, them Wobblies made ’em put in toilets and showers; but, hell, it all went to pieces.” His hand went up automatically for more apples. “I joined unions,” he said. “We’d elect a president and first thing we knowed, he’d be kissing the ass of the superintendent, and then he’d sell us out. We’d pay dues, and the treasurer’d run out on us. I don’ know. Maybe you young squirts can figure something out. We done what we could.”

Dan’s big hand found Jim’s arm just above the elbow, and crushed it until it hurt. “I got things out of it while I was at it,” he said. “I’d go up a pole, and I’d know that the boss and the owner of the timber and the president of the company didn’t have the guts to do what I was doing. It was me. I’d look down on ever’thing from up there. And ever’thing looked small, and the men were little, but I was up there. I was my own size. I got things out of it, all right.”

“They took all the profits from your work,” Jim said. “They got rich, an’ when you couldn’t go up any more, they kicked you out.”

“Yes,” said Dan, “they did that, all right. I guess I must be gettin’ pretty old, kid. I don’t give a damn if they did—I just don’t give a damn.”

“And who are your neighbors?” Mac asked quickly. “I’ll tell you who they are: Hunter, Gillray, Martin. Who holds your paper? Torgas Finance Company. Who owns Torgas Finance Company? Hunter, Gillray, Martin. Have they been squeezing you? You know God damn well they have. How long you going to last? Maybe one year; and then Torgas Finance takes your place. Is that straight? Now suppose you got a crop out with no labor charges; suppose you sold it on a rising market? Could you clear out your paper?”

Dr. Burton threw back his head and looked at the sky. “Mac,” he said. “Look at the physiological injustice, the injustice of tetanus, the injustice of syphilis, the gangster methods of amoebic dysentery—that’s my field.

“Revolution and communism will cure social injustice.”

“Yes, and disinfection and prophylaxis will prevent the others.”

“It’s different, though; men are doing one, and germs are doing the other.”

They were nearing the Anderson place. Jim asked, “What do we do now, Mac?”

“Well, we hold the funeral, and we start picketing. It’ll settle down now. They’ll run in scabs with trucks.”

“You still think we’ll get beat, Mac?”

“I don’t know. They got this valley organized. God, how they’ve got it organized. It’s not so hard to do when a few men control everything, land, courts, banks. They can cut off loans, and they can railroad a man to jail, and they can always bribe plenty.”

Mac edged him slowly away, for the men were beginning to move in, toward the shrill voice. “What you blaming us for?” he said. “We didn’t do it. It was those nice neighbors of yours.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t of happened if we didn’t get mixed up with you.”

Mac turned angrily on him. “Listen, mister, we know you got a sock in the teeth; little guys like you and me get it all the time. We’re tryin’ to make it so guys like you won’t get it.”

“That wagon cost eighteen hundred dollars. Why, man, I can’t go in town without the kids throw rocks at me. You ruined us, that’s what you did.”

Mac asked, “How’s Al feel about it?”

“I think Al’s red as hell himself. Only people he’s sore at are the men that did it.”

Sam spat in the road. “I’ll tell you what I done. I was in ’Frisco on Bloody Thursday. I smacked a cop right off a horse. I was one of the guys that went in and got them night sticks from a carpenters’ shop that the cops was gettin’ made. Got one of ’em right now, for a souvenir.”

“Tha’s a damn lie. You ain’t no longshoreman; you’re a lousy fruit tramp.”

“Sure I’m a fruit tramp. Know why? ’Cause I’m blacklisted with every shippin’ company in the whole damn country, that’s why.” He spoke with pride. A silence met his assertion. He went on, “I seen more trouble than you can-heat bindle-stiffs ever seen.” His contempt subjugated them. “Now keep your eyes down them rows, and cut out all this talk.” They marched along a while.

“They’ll just beat you up worse, Al. I’m tellin’ you straight. They’ll knock hell out of you.”

“Well, I won’t care then, because I’ll be fightin’ ’em, see? But there I was, just runnin’ a little lunch wagon, an’ givin’ bums a handout now an’ then——” His voice choked and tears squeezed out of his eyes.

Dr. Burton touched him gently on the cheek. “Don’t talk any more, Al.”

“I’ll see you get an application card,” Mac said. And he continued, “By God, it’s funny. Guy after guy gets knocked into our side by a cop’s night stick. Every time they maul hell out of a bunch of men, we get a flock of applications. Why, there’s a Red Squad cop in Los Angeles that sends us more members than a dozen of our organizers. An’ the damn fools haven’t got sense enough to realize it. O.K., Al. You’ll get your application. I don’t know whether it’ll go through, but it will if I can push it through.” He patted Al’s good arm. “I hope it goes through. You’re a good guy, Al. Don’t blame me for your wagon.”

Mac said harshly, “We can’t help it, Doc. He happens to be the one that’s sacrificed for the men. Somebody has to break if the whole bunch is going to get out of the slaughter-house. We can’t think about the hurts of one man. It’s necessary, Doc.”

“I wasn’t questioning your motives, nor your ends. I was just sorry for the poor old man. His self-respect is down. That’s a bitter thing to him, don’t you think so, Mac?”

“I can’t take time to think about the feelings of one man?” Mac said sharply. “I’m too busy with big bunches of men.”

“Yes,” said Mac. “That’s the trouble. It won’t do no good to show him. He looks so comfortable all the guys’ll want to get right in with him.” The doctor moved close and looked down at the coffin for a moment, and then he walked to a box and sat down. His big, plaintive eyes fastened on Mac’s face. Mac still stared at Joy. “He was such a good little guy,” he said. “He didn’t want nothing for himself. Y’see, he wasn’t very bright. But some way he got it into his head something was wrong. He didn’t see why food had to be dumped and left to rot when people were starving. Poor little fool, he could never understand that. And he got the notion he might help to stop it. I wonder how much he helped? It’s awful hard to say. Maybe not at all—maybe a lot. You can’t tell.” Mac’s voice had become unsteady. The doctor’s eyes stayed on his face, and the doctor’s mouth was smiling a curious half-sardonic, half-kindly smile.

Dr. Burton fell in beside Mac when he was clear of the bunched people. “You surely know how to work them, Mac,” he said quietly. “No preacher ever brought people to the mourners’ bench quicker. Why didn’t you keep it up awhile? You’d’ve had them talking in tongues and holy-rolling in a minute.”

Mac said irritably, “Quit sniping at me, Doc. I’ve got a job to do, and I’ve got to use every means to do it.”

“But where did you learn it, Mac?”

“Learn what?”

“All those tricks.”

Mac said tiredly, “Don’t try to see so much, Doc. I wanted them mad. Well, they’re mad. What do you care how it’s done?”

“I know how it’s done,” said Burton. “I just wondered how you learned. By the way, old Dan’s satisfied not to go. He decided when we lifted him.”

“This truck’s got me,” Albert complained. “The God-damned truck’s just about two-bitted me to death.” He looked sadly ahead. His lips scarcely moved when he talked. “When I’m workin’ and I get three dollars to the good and I get set to look me up a floozy, somethin’ on this buggy busts and costs three dollars. Never fails. God damn truck’s worse’n a wife.”

Jim said earnestly, “In any good system, you’d have a good truck.”

“Yeah? In any good system I’d have a floozy. I ain’t Dakin. If Dakin’s truck could of cooked, he wouldn’t of wanted nothing else.”

At last the smile had faded from Bolter’s face. He said gravely, “The American nation has become great because everybody pitched in and helped. American labor is the best labor in the world, and the highest paid.”

London broke in angrily, “S’pose a Chink does get half a cent a day, if he can eat on it? What the hell do we care how much we get, if we got to go hungry?”

Bolter said hurriedly, “We don’t know anything about any vigilantes. But if the outraged citizens band together to keep the peace, that’s their affair. The Association knows nothing about that.” He smiled again. “Can’t you men see that if you attack our homes and our children we have to protect them? Wouldn’t you protect your own children?”

“What the hell do you think we’re doin’?” London cried. “We’re trying to protect ’em from starving. We’re usin’ the only way a workin’ stiff’s got. Don’t you go talkin’ about no children, or we’ll show you something.”

Bolter stood where he was. “I hoped you would listen to reason,” he said. “We have information that you’re being influenced by radicals, sent here by red organizations. They are misleading you, telling you lies. They only want to stir up trouble. They’re professional trouble-makers, paid to cause strikes.”

Mac stood up from his haunches. “Well, the dirty rats,” he said. “Misleadin’ American workin’ men, are they? Prob’ly gettin’ paid by Russia, don’t you think, Mr. Bolter?”

London set a match to the tin lantern and hung it on the tent pole, where it cast a pale, steady light. Mac took up a position in front of Bolter, and his muscled face broke into a derisive grin. “All right, Sonny Boy,” he said. “You been talkin’ big, but I know you been wettin’ your pants the whole time. I admit you can do all the things you say you can, but look what happens after. Your health service burned the tents in Washington. And that was one of the reasons that Hoover lost the labor vote. You called out guardsmen in ’Frisco, and damn near the whole city went over to the strikers. Y’ had to have the cops stop food from comin’ in to turn public opinion against the strike. I’m not talkin’ right an’ wrong now, mister. I’m tellin’ you what happens.” Mac stepped back a pace. “Where do you think we’re gettin’ food and blankets an’ medicine an’ money? You know damn well where we’re gettin’ ’em. Your valley’s lousy with sympathizers. Your ‘outraged citizens’ are a little bit outraged at you babies, and you know it. And you know, if you get too tough, the unions ’ll go out. Truck drivers and restaurant men and field hands, everybody. And just because you do know it, you try to throw a bluff. Well, it don’t work. This camp’s cleaner’n the lousy bunk houses you keep for us on your ranches. You come here to try to scare us, an’ it don’t work.”

“There aren’t any beginnings,” Burton said. “Nor any ends. It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful struggle out of a past he can’t remember, into a future he can’t forsee nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every enemy except one. He cannot win over himself. How mankind hates itself.”

Jim said, “We don’t hate ourselves, we hate the invested capital that keeps us down.”

“The other side is made of men, Jim, men like you. Man hates himself. Psychologists say a man’s self-love is balanced neatly with self-hate. Mankind must be the same. We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man. I’m lonely, Jim. I have nothing to hate. What are you going to get out of it, Jim?”

Burton put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know; I’m lonely, I guess. I’m awfully lonely. I’m working all alone, towards nothing. There’s some compensation for you people. I only hear heartbeats through a stethoscope. You hear them in the air.” Suddenly he leaned over and put his hand under Lisa’s chin and raised her head up and looked into her shrinking eyes. Her hand came slowly up and pulled gently at his wrist. He let go and put his hand back in his pocket.

London eyed him cautiously, as though his mind slowly circled Mac’s mind. “What do you get out of it?” he asked.

“Money, you mean? Not a damn thing.”

“Then what do you do it for?”

“Well, it’s hard to say—you know how you feel about Sam an’ all the guys that travel with you? Well, I feel that way about all the workin’ stiffs in the country.”

“Guys you don’t even know?”

“Yes, guys I don’t even know. Jim here’s just the same, just the same.”

“Sounds crazy as hell,” said London. “Sounds like a gag. An’ you don’t get no money?”

“You don’t see no Rolls-Royces around, do you?”

“But how about after?”

“After what?”

“Maybe after this is over you’ll collect.”

“There ain’t no after,” Mac said. “When this one’s done, we’ll be in another one.”

Mac lowered his voice. He moved close and put his hand on London’s knee. “Listen,” he said. “I guess we’re goin’ to lose this strike. But we raised enough hell so maybe there won’t be a strike in the cotton. Now the papers say we’re just causing trouble. But we’re getting the stiffs used to working together; getting bigger and bigger bunches working together all the time, see? It doesn’t make any difference if we lose. Here’s nearly a thousand men who’ve learned how to strike. When we get a whole slough of men working together, maybe—maybe Torgas Valley, most of it, won’t be owned by three men. Maybe a guy can get an apple for himself without going to jail for it, see? Maybe they won’t dump apples in the river to keep up the price. When guys like you and me need a apple to keep our God damn bowels open, see? You’ve got to look at the whole thing, London, not just this little strike.”

London was staring painfully at Mac’s mouth, as though he tried to see the words as they came out. “That’s kind of reva—revolution, ain’t it?”

“Sure it is. It’s a revolution against hunger and cold. The three guys that own this valley are going to raise hell to keep that land, and to keep dumping the apples to raise the price. A guy that thinks food ought to be eaten is a God damned red. D’you see that?”

London’s mouth was open. “Jesus, what a hell of a way to look at it. Don’t you guys get no pleasure?”

“Damn right,” said Mac. “More than most people do. It’s an important job. You get a hell of a drive out of something that has some meaning to it, and don’t you forget it. The thing that takes the heart out of a man is work that doesn’t lead any place. Ours is slow, but it’s all going in one direction. Christ, I stand here shooting off my face. I’ve got to go.”

It’s a long story, Jim. You can read it if you want to.” He turned the page. “Oh boy, oh boy. Listen to this editorial:

We believe the time has come to take action. When transient laborers tie up the Valley’s most important industry, when fruit tramps, led and inspired by paid foreign agitators (That’s us, Jim), carry on a campaign of violence and burning, bringing Red Russia into peaceful America, when our highways are no longer safe for American citizens, nor their homes safe from firebrands, we believe the time for action has come!This county takes care of its own people, but these strikers do not belong here. They flout the laws, and destroy life and property. They are living on the fat of the land, supplied by secret sympathizers. This paper does not, and has never believed in violence; but it does believe that when law is not sufficient to cope with these malcontents and murderers, an aroused citizenry must take a hand. The incendiary deserves no mercy. We must drive out these paid trouble-makers. This paper recommends that citizens inquire into the sources of luxuries these men have been given. It is reported that three prime steers were slaughtered in their camp yesterday.”

“Sure. That editor used some dollar-an’-a-half words, all right. ’Paid foreign agitators.’ Me, born in Minneapolis! An’ granpaw fought in the Battle of Bull Run. He always said he thought it was a bull-fight instead of a battle he was goin’ to ’til they started shootin’ at him. An’ you’re about as foreign as the Hoover administration. Oh, hell, Jim. That’s the way it always is. But—” he brought out the last of his tobacco—’’it’s closing in, Jim. Sam shouldn’t of set that fire.”

Mac said sharply, “You think we’re too important, and this little bang-up is too important. If the thing blew up right now it’d be worth it. A lot of the guys’ve been believing this crap about the noble American working-man, an’ the partnership of capital and labor. A lot of ’em are straight now. They know how much capital thinks of ’em, and how quick capital would poison ’em like a bunch of ants. An’ by Christ, we showed ’em two things—what they are, an’ what they’ve got to do. And this last little ruckus showed ’em they could do it. Remember what the ’Frisco strike did to Sam? Well, all these guys’ll get to be a little like Sam.”

“But do you think they’ve got brains enough to see it?”

“Not brains, Jim. It don’t take brains. After it’s all over the thing’ll go on working down inside of ’em. They’ll know it without thinking it out.”

“Well, what do you think; had we better just fade, or put up a fight?”

“Fight, if we can make the guys do it,” said Mac. “If they sneak off, they get a bad feeling out of it, but if they fight and get licked, well, they still fought; and it’s worth doing.”

Jim settled down on one knee. “Look, if they come through with guns they’re going to kill a lot of our guys.”

Mac’s eyes grew slitted and cold. “We keep switching sides, Jim. Suppose they do kill some of our men? That helps our side. For every man they kill ten new ones come over to us. The news goes creeping around the country and men all over hear it and get mad. Guys that are just half-warm get hot, see? But if we sneak off and the word gets around, and men say ’They didn’t even put up a fight,’ why all the working stiffs will be unsure of themselves. If we fight, an’ the news gets around, other men in the same position’ll fight too.”

Jim asked, “Mac, do you s’pose we could get a leave of absence some time and go where nobody knows us, and just sit down in an orchard?”

“’Bout two hours of it, and you’d be raring to go again.”

“I never had time to look at things, Mac, never. I never looked how leaves come out. I never looked at the way things happen. This morning there was a whole line of ants on the floor of the tent. I couldn’t watch them. I was thinking about something else. Some time I’d like to sit all day and look at bugs, and never think of anything else.”

“They’d drive you nuts,” said Mac. “Men are bad enough, but bugs’d drive you nuts.”

“Well, just once in a while you get that feeling—I never look at anything. I never take time to see anything. It’s going to be over, and I won’t know—even how an apple grows.”

“What th’ hell do I care who burned it? It’s burned, the crop’s burned. What do you damn bums know about it? I’ll lose the place sure, now.” His eyes watered with rage. “You bastards never owned nothing. You never planted trees an’ seen ’em grow an’ felt ’em with your hands. You never owned a thing, never went out an’ touched your own apple trees with your hands. What do you know?”

“We never had a chance to own anything,” Mac said. “We’d like to own something and plant trees.”