Page 87 of By Any Means

“I did. I couldn’t. I can’t stand to be idle; that’s all. August isn’t here, and I can’t sit here alone, waiting for the telegram that will mean our lives are soon to crumble down around our ears. I cannot.”

Laurie reached for him. “Hey. You’re not alone. So your brother’s alive, and the world will know it. It will be a scandal, and sensational, and awful, but you’ve weathered those before. He won’t leave you out in the cold, will he? He didn’t before.”

The hot shame was almost too much to bear. But surely, admitting it now was better than Laurie finding out tomorrow morning, in all-black newsprint, what he had done. Who he truly was. “It isn’t… solely that. You don’t yet have all the threads.”

“Chary, I don’t need ’em. Not yours.”

“You want the truth,” Chary insisted.

“I don’t— You know what, wait a moment.” Laurie launched up and turned to the papers on the table. He ordered them, squinting. “Here we are.” He thrust them toward Chary. “Read these. Here’s why I haven’t slept. I can’t expose Raberding for what he is and was to your brother—but I sure can write about him wanting to forcibly monopolize the island’s glass industry with theft and murder.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry it’s not a fair copy. It’s just preliminary, mostly theories.”

“Theft and murder?” Chary took the papers. They weren’t messy, anyway; Laurie apparently wrote drafts confidently, passionately, in great swooping loops of longhand. The man himself had done unspeakable things to him—with his mouth—and yet the reader in Chary was still a bit thrilled at the strangeness of Lawrence Tulley’s unedited words in his hands.

The Murderous Depths to Which a Capitalist Will Go to Wreak Monopoly: An Exhortation for Anti-Trust Laws.

“Good Lord. You think it truly was Raberding behind it all? He didn’t once mention having me attacked. Not in all his gloating about rescuing me.”

“Not only your attempted murder. Sam Border. James Delargy. Wiktor Roczeń. Dmytro Tkachenko. All of them disappeared since August took over at Wright Glass and made himself a socialite. Since he met up with Raberding. The timeline’s looking perfect.”

“Oh. So you’ll set out to prove Raberding killed them for his own motivations?” Chary paused. He hadn’t yet read the draft, and there he was about to begin refuting its basic premises. “But why would Raberding have my gaffers arrested and murdered to get to August? I told you, August had no contact with any of those men. It couldn’t have been personal.”

“He’s Rockefeller to your Carnegie. Any means to an end. Anything to reduce confidence in Wright Glass. Just another rung to collapse the ladder from the inside so he can buy you out.”

“Shareholders don’t pay attention to those kinds of things,” Chary tried. “The welfare of individual workers? Immigrants? Glassworking is inherently dangerous. Men do die, of silicosis and worse. So long as production increases over time and there are no major scandals influencing customers against us, the shareholders are largely satisfied. I have more than a majority stake, anyway, even if they were not.” He bit his lip. “I always have had.”

Laurie didn’t hear it. He tapped the papers. “Would you read it, though? Raberding wanted a New York glass. He told me himself. ‘Why shouldn’t New York have a consolidated glassworks?’ he said; I’ve quoted it⁠—”

“Raberding wanted a New York glass, but I’m now convinced it was a means of elaborate overture toward my brother. A proposal.”

“Or it’s two birds with one stone,” Laurie encouraged. “He even magnanimously promised union compliance for all.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Chary said, “but then that makes even less sense to me. Because those gaffers were every one of them union salts, weren’t they? Why have those men killed?”

Laurie heard that. His mouth snapped shut.

“In fact, I will sit down and read it,” Chary said quickly. “I’m sure you address that. Perhaps to make our non-union status look even more villainous?”

“You— They were salts? It doesn’t say it anywhere, because I didn’t know that. I was told specifically— Irving said— What?” Laurie sat heavily back down on the bed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“No,” Chary admitted. “I didn’t. Perhaps because you thought I might be the one murdering them for trying to unionize.”

“You’re a cuckoo in the nest! A boss kind of cuckoo! You really knew men were proselytizing unionization and didn’t do a thing about it?”

“No, I didn’t,” Chary said, inexplicably hurt. Cuckoo? He stole no eggs nor food. Didn’t he not? Was taking the place of one gaffer workingman stealing? Sitting in a nest that wasn’t his? He owned the nest. “I told you, I’ve never stood in the way of unions at Wright Glass. My father didn’t, either.”

Laurie looked skeptical. Did he really still see Chary only as a rich man and nothing else?

“It’s simply not as easy as a button-switch, unionizing. We haven’t bent to the Glass Bottle Blowers’ because their exclusivity demands would mean replacing nigh on our entire workforce. If you do come shadow me tonight, you’ll see easily what I mean. But they aren’t the only means to unionization. Just the bullies.”

“I like to think of it as necessary leverage against limitless capitalist power, but go on.”

Chary would, thank you very much. “A union can start small. I knew it was going on, but Mr. Border never approached me ‘proselytizing,’ as you say. Plenty of others around me. I give you one Columbia-educated guess why.”

“You’re white,” Laurie said at once.

“Yes. He was trying to form a branch for⁠—”

“Anybody browner than you and I,” Laurie finished. “Oh, God.” He put palms over his eyes. “No, that’s a different motive entirely. This is a different story entirely. Again. That’s beyond exclusionary; it’s…”