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Mamma gave a little gasp. But Rosa was not finished. One more dip and she put a perfectly curved comma between ROSES and TOO—in case, just in case, Miss Finch were to see the sign and marvel that these ignorant foreigners should know enough to insert a comma. Careful not to drip, she replaced the brush in the pot.
Meantime, Anna was reading the second line aloud and then the whole sign. Something like a little cheer went up, and everyone leaned in for a closer look at the masterpiece.
"No, no!" Mrs. Marino yelled, spreading her arms out once again. "It'sa still wet. Don'ta touch, nobody! It'sa bellissimo! Ooh, Rosa, bambina mia! It'sa the best sign nobody ever made!" She took Rosa's head in both her big red hands and kissed the part in her hair. She was weeping for joy.
There were tears in Mamma's eyes as well. "Don' I say she's top of class?"
After Mrs. Marino pronounced the lettering completely dry, Anna carefully nailed the pasteboard to a broken broomstick, and the ladies went home to cut the bread for their families' meager noon meal. When they gathered later to march to the station, Mrs. Marino asked Rosa if she wanted to carry her sign. It was then she remembered all over again that she wanted no part of this strike—this strike for which she had just that morning made the "best sign nobody ever made." "No," she said. "It's Mamma's sign. It was all her idea. She should carry it."
"You sure?" Mamma asked, the excitement of carrying the wonderful sign already sparkling in her dark eyes.
"I'm sure," Rosa said. "I'm not really part of the strike. I'm not a worker. I shouldn't be in the parade."
There was a murmur of disagreement from the women. Hadn't she just made the best sign, the bellissimo best sign? But they were eager to be off with their beautiful sign, which was sure to get the attention of Mr. Big Bill Haywood, who was coming all the way from the miners' strike far out west to support them, the foreign mill workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
At the door, Mamma saw that Rosa was hanging back. "Come along, Rosina, it's going to be great parade. Thousand, thousand marchers. Mr. Big Bill Haywood come all a way cross America just for us. You don' wanta miss it, eh?"
"I got homework," Rosa said. But it wasn't homework, it was the knot in her stomach, which never seemed to loosen, that kept her from witnessing what the local newspaper later called "the greatest demonstration ever accorded a visitor in Lawrence." There were more than 15,000 people at the station to greet Mr. Big Bill Haywood and the famous woman organizer, Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, but Rosa was not among them. She was on her bed at home, praying to the Virgin to keep her mamma and sister safe. The sign would be noticed, she was sure of that, but how could it be good to be noticed when you were up against the powerful Mr. Billy Wood and the mayor and the police and the militia and the governor—the whole state of Massachusetts, maybe even the whole United States of America? And if Mamma got put in jail—or hurt—or killed—whose fault would it be then? She had made the best sign. It would be on her head. She slid under the quilt and pulled it over her guilty head, although it was still daylight outside the tenement door.
The Beautiful Mrs. Gurley Flynn
Jake was wound up tighter than string on a top. So wound up after a week of stealing food and sleeping in garbage heaps that, without meaning to, he let himself get caught up in the excitement of Sunday's mob. There were thousands of them, all pressing toward the train station. Someone was coming to town. Someone, judging from the feverish pitch of the crowd, who they believed was going to settle things for them once and for all.
Jake was shorter than the men crowded about him, and he could see nothi
ng except the dirty coat of the man whose body he was shoved against. But Jake was thin as an empty spool and quite used to weaseling his way through crowded streets, so by the time he heard the whistle and then the powerful chugging of the great locomotive, he was in the front row of spectators.
The train stopped with a squeal of brakes and a great whoosh of steam. The crowd roared, and people began to jostle one another for a better view. Flags and signs were raised high above the heads of those carrying them. If Jake had been able to read, he might have known whose name was painted on them, who was of such almighty importance that this enormous crowd had braved the cold and the threats of the authorities to meet his train at the station. Then, as though to answer his question, the crowd began a chant, "Big Bill! Big Bill!"
The brakes had hardly stopped squealing when a huge man in a cowboy hat leaped off the train, not even waiting for the porter to set the steps beside the car. His eyes swept the crowd. One of his eyes was milky white, which made him look like a fierce half-blind giant. It gave Jake a shiver, but no one else seemed daunted. They screamed their welcome. The man waved his big hat and smiled. Coming down the steps behind him was a small group of men and, of all things, a young woman. The other men couldn't hold a candle to the one who must be the "Big Bill" the crowd had shouted for, but the woman ... the woman simply took Jake's breath away. She wore a large soft hat that almost hid what seemed to be a mound of black hair. Her skin was creamy white, her waist narrower than Big Bill's neck, her eyes clear and blue as a summer sky. Jake put his hand on his chest to keep his heart from jumping right out of his shirt. He couldn't stop staring at her. She was enough to make anyone want to join their blasted union.
Her eyes flashed with excitement as one of the three bands struck up a tune. The Syrian band wasn't here to greet the newcomers. Jake knew from the talk on the street that their leader was in jail for hiding dynamite. Ha! Did those fool bosses think anyone was going to believe that some little Syrian shopkeeper was going to risk his life to dynamite a mill? Jake spit his contempt toward the dirty snow but hit the shoes of the marcher beside him instead. Fortunately, the man was cheering so vigorously he hadn't noticed.
The three bands took turns playing tunes, and at the end of each song a different part of the crowd roared approval—some tune from their old country, Jake guessed. Then all three bands together began to play tunes that made the police and militia tighten their grips on their guns and glare nervously at the marchers.
"Hey, Jake boy! Where you been?" It was Angelo and his housemates, including Giuliano, who was probably still mad about his ruined shirt. Well, Jake couldn't help ruining the man's shirt, could he? He hadn't asked his pa to beat him bloody, now, had he? Just then, the crowd turned to escort Big Bill and his party to the common, and Jake was able to avoid his one-time companions. But it was stupid of him, wasn't it? Angelo had seemed glad to see him. Jake could probably sleep in their place and eat regularly if he caught up with them. After all, he hadn't stolen anything from their apartment—just bloodied grumpy little Giuliano's shirt.
The party from the train and the leaders of the strike from Lawrence, now including Ettor and Giovannitti, both of whom the workers had embraced as their own, began to make their way through the crowd toward the common. They passed so close to Jake that he could have reached out and touched the beautiful woman, but he didn't quite dare. He let the crowd turn him around so as to follow the leaders. The crowd joined the bands, singing raucously along, seemingly oblivious of the police and militia lining the route. It took a long time for the thousands to walk the five blocks from the station to the common—time to sing plenty of songs before everyone was assembled in front of the makeshift platform on which she stood, shining like a star among the dark-coated men.
The speeches finally began. Jake wasn't much for speeches, but he waited, hoping she would speak. One good thing about crowds like this—everyone was packed so tightly together that the only thing that could get cold was his feet. There was no way to keep them out of the icy slush. Even though he was impatient for the men to shut up and let the lady speak, he had to admit that Big Bill was impressive—his voice was so powerful, he probably could have been heard all the way to Canal Street.
"I have read in the newspapers," the big man said, "that Lawrence was afraid of me. It is not the people of Lawrence who are fearful; it is the superintendents, agents, and owners of the mills." The crowd roared. Then he gazed over their heads at the militia lining the streets around the common. "I have been in strikes where soldiers were at hand," he told the crowd, "but I never saw a strike defeated by soldiers."
Jake joined in the cries of approval, but his eyes were not on Big Bill; they were on the woman at Big Bill's side. He couldn't keep his eyes off her. Just looking at her made a flame start at his frozen toes and shoot through his body all the way to the hairs on his head. Then and there he determined to join the strike activity, just so he could follow her around.
The next day, Jake found out that she would be speaking to the women strikers in the Franco-Belgian Hall. He didn't care that it was a women's meeting where only women and children would be welcome. He forgot that a few days earlier he had been proud when that silly schoolboy Joe O'Brien had taken him for a man. If he had to turn into a kid to get into a meeting where his goddess was speaking, he'd be a kid.
She saw him staring up at her as she was being introduced, or he guessed that it was an introduction. It was all in French. She looked him in the face and smiled...smiled right at him, Jake Beale. He felt faint and was too befuddled to smile back. At last, she began to speak. To his delight, she spoke in English and then waited patiently while one of the women strikers turned it into French. She would have to leave Lawrence right away, she said. The women protested. "I don't want to leave you," she explained, "but I have to go and collect money from other chapters of our union. This may be a long strike, and your brother and sister members of the Industrial Workers of the World will want to support you. You must have food for yourselves and your children. You must have money to buy fuel for your stoves in this cold weather. Your job is to stand together, to oppose all who would weaken your resolve—to march, to picket. My job is to gather the funds to support your cause." She smiled at them all. "But I will be back, I promise."
There was no point in going to meetings if she wasn't going to be there. Without her presence, all the light was gone from those gloomy halls. For the rest of the week, Jake went back to spending nights in garbage piles and stealing food, and he went to the various halls only when he knew there would be soup. While there, he always kept his mouth shut so no one would guess he was native-born and not one of the immigrant strikers. The one time he dared go to the Italian hall, he thought he saw the shoe girl ahead of him in line. He left quickly, before she could see him, though why should he avoid her? Hadn't he left good money—a whole penny—behind the last time he slept in her kitchen? Sometimes he didn't understand himself.
By Friday it seemed to him that Mrs. Gurley Flynn, as he now knew she was called, had forgotten her promise, that she would never return. He was tired and bored and wretched. Why not go back to work and earn some money? The bosses were paying the scabs good wages. So he started for work that morning, only to be stopped two blocks above Canal Street by a huge woman who screamed threats in his face in Italian, ending with a large hand soundly slapping his bottom and a command in English: "No scab! Go home!"
Somehow he was more afraid of these big women than he was of the police on their horses or the little tin-soldier militia with their guns and bayonets.
All that day, as he walked wearily around the town, he heard the rumor that Joe Ettor had gone to Boston to meet Billy Wood and demand a fifteen percent pay raise for all the workers. Hah! Not that Jake could figure what fifteen percent of five dollars and twenty-five cents would amount to—but why should it matter? He might not be able to do much figuring, but he could figure well enough to know that Billy Wood was not going to add a penny to his wages.
By Sunday he was so cold and tired that he went to every Mass in Holy Rosary Church just so he could get some sleep. He was too tired to trot up to the altar with the hope of getting one of those little paper crackers, but he could doze through the Latin gibberish. He would have stayed longer, except that one of those Italian papists must have spotted him. At any rate, the priest came down the aisle after the church had emptied following the noon Mass and asked him what he was doing sleeping through three Masses in a row. Jake hurried out, giving a backward glance at the poor box. The lock looked flimsy enough to warrant a return visit.
