Authors: Roberta Kagan
Chapter 82
The union strike was settled. Management realized that the labor force had the power to hurt their business and because of this, they gave in.
The union gave a big party to celebrate the victory. Benny and Anna, along with Alice and Bette, attended. They had buffet tables of food, and a small local band.
“I told you we would win. I told you that the union would get us what we need,” Alice said.
“I can’t believe we got a forty-hour, five-day workweek,” Bette said. “It’s wonderful. Now I can have time to do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Yeah, like what?” Alice asked.
“I dunno, but I’ll have time.”
“The world is changing, girls. I’ve seen it in every industry. They can’t walk all over us anymore. Once we organize, labor becomes a force stronger than the owners and the managers of any company. They don’t do the work, they don’t even know how. We do; they’re dependent on us, and because of that they know that they had better pay attention when we make demands,” Benny said.
“Well, they sure did pay attention,” Alice said, and she smiled.
Bette nodded.
“I am going to go and get some punch,” Anna said.
“Let me get it for you,” Benny offered.
“Sure,” Anna said.
Benny went to get the punch.
“He’s crazy about you,” Bette said.
“No, we’re just friends,” Anna answered.
“Maybe that’s all you’re feeling, but he’s falling for you. I can see it; it’s all over his face. Shoot, I wish he were falling for me. I’m single after all,” Alice said.
Anna felt guilty. She’d been selfish, wanted just a little sweetness in her life, and now she was about to hurt two men, one who meant a great deal to her.
It all began so simply. Benny was a friend who occupied the lonely hours for Anna. But somehow, it grew. He was funny, charming, and more than willing to take her anywhere. They went dancing and took long walks together along the river. One night Benny introduced her to Woody Guthrie and his pro-union music. They went to a coffee club in the city to hear him play. Woody did not play with a band. He was a one-man troubadour with an acoustic guitar and a gritty honest voice. The simple words and music of his songs expressed the very heart of the working man. Until Benny had brought her to see Woody play, Anna had only listened to orchestras and big bands. She’d never heard music like this. One couldn’t dance to it; instead it touched the listeners deeply, forcing them to think.
“Do you like Guthrie?” Benny asked.
“I don’t know. Sometimes some of the things he says in his songs are like a slap in the face. By that I mean it’s like they are saying, ‘Wake up and look around you. See what is happening.’ Does that make any sense?”
“Yes, because that is exactly what the music is saying. Woody began his union work with the migrants in California.”
“Migrants?”
“Yeah, the folks who work picking fruit, and vegetables, that kind of thing. It was terrible for them. They were working for a dollar a day and that was when they could find work. And it wasn’t enough to feed their families, so they had to borrow from the company stores, which were owned by the same people who employed them. So the migrants were always working off their debt; they could never get ahead. You see there were a lot of them. After the dust storms hit Texas, Oklahoma, and all the states out that way, the farmers who lived there lost everything. So they had to leave their homes to find work.”
“Dust storms?” Anna tilted her head to the side.
“Yep, there were some big old dust storms. Clouds, big and black, stretched as far as the eyes could see. The dust covered all their crops and they couldn’t plant anything.”
“So they went to California?”
“They had to. The storms kept coming and they were causing these farmers all kinds of lung problems, not to mention starvation because the storms killed all their crops. Then, because the famers were leaving their little towns, the people who ran the stores where they shopped had to close too. And the towns became like ghost towns.”’
“But why California?” Anna asked.
“Well, California needed pickers, so they sent out flyers telling the farmers that there was work out West. When the farmers saw the flyers, they headed out that way. But when they got to California, there weren’t enough jobs for all the people that showed up. So they set up all these tent cities where people lived, hoping to get work. Now, the owners of the farms saw just how many desperate folks had showed up and they took advantage of the situation. They lowered the pay and worked the poor pickers real hard.”
As they sat at a table in the back of the small coffee house, Anna listened to Benny, intently her chin on her fist.
“So what happened?”
“That’s when the unions came in. Little by little, the unions are making their mark on the world.”
“And this is what you want to do?”
“Yep. I want to make a difference.”
“If I hadn’t seen the results with my own eyes, I’d call you crazy.”
“You can call me anything you want, but till there is some kind of equality in this world, I’ll keep going out on a limb.”
“Anna,” Benny said, “We’ve been seeing each other for a while now, and you have come to mean so much to me.”
“I like you a lot. You have made everything brighter for me in this lonely city, but I am married. I told you that when this first met. All we can ever be is friends.”
“I’ll take your friendship rather than lose you. But I have to be honest, I want so much more.”
“I know you do, and maybe it’s best that we stop seeing each other this way. It is too tempting for both of us. And my Alex is out somewhere fighting. I can’t do this to him.”
“So you want to stop seeing me?”
“I think it’s probably best. Don’t you?”
“No, but if it’s what you want, I would never force you.”
Woody Guthrie took off his cap picked up his guitar and sat down in a chair on the stage to do his next set.
“How you all doin’ tonight?” he said. “I want to play this here song for you. I wrote it while I was ridin’ the rails from California to New York. It’s in honor of a friend of mine, a hobo who I met while travelin.’ A fine man and a talented artist, his name is Leadbelly…”
“I think we should go,” Anna said.
“So you probably had enough of my talkin,’ You all came here to hear the music, so let me get this going.”
Woody began to strum his guitar.
“If you want to leave, I’ll take you home,” Benny said.
Anna got up and Benny followed her. He flagged a cab. They were silent the entire ride.
“Goodnight. And thank you,” she said at the door to her building.
“I guess this is goodbye?” he asked.
“I’ll see you at work.”
He nodded. She thought she saw the trace of a tear in his eye, but he turned away too quickly for her to be sure.
Then he got into the cab. It rolled down the street, turned the corner, and he was gone.
Anna lay in her bed that night thinking about Alex and Benny, and work and unions and everything. She would miss Benny, but if this so-called friendship continued, she was afraid she might break her marriage vows.
It was for the best.
But as she closed her eyes and fell asleep, she dreamed of Benny’s lips on hers. The passion and life force that radiated off him surrounded her, giving her purpose.
“Benny…” She fell into his arms. But she was only dreaming.
Chapter 83
Each night a selected crew went out carrying searchlights looking for German bombers. When Alex’s turn came, he waited until sunset and then joined his troop. Only a sliver of a moon shone on that starless night. As he walked in the darkness, Alex tripped over a rock. Pain shot through his leg as he tried to get up. It was difficult to walk, but he made it back to camp. In the morning, his ankle had swollen and he could hardly stand on it.
His sergeant frowned as Alex was taken on a stretcher to the medic’s tent. That boy’s not cut out for the service. He’s a lazy, uncoordinated Kike, and a German to boot. I am not sure we can trust him, Sergeant Gregory Sife, thought. I wish he were in someone else’s platoon.
It embarrassed Alex to be lying on a stretcher with a broken ankle, next to men who’d been really injured during a bombing. The guys all talked amongst themselves, but Alex was all in knots he withdrew deep inside of himself, and never joined in their conversations. Instead, he turned his face to the wall, and let his mind carry him away.
“Hello.” A young British nurse came over to examine Alex one morning. “My name is Nelly.” She said in a cheerful voice. Her blonde curls framed her face, as she looked at him with emerald eyes.
“Nelly, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Alex.”
“You have an accent. Where are you from?”
“Germany.”
“Germany?”
“Yes, I’m an American citizen. But I am also a German Jew.”
“Oh my gosh. Well, I’ll bet the others give you a real hard time. They are against anything German, and hardly understand that German Jews are hated by the Nazis as much or maybe even more than the Americans.”
“How do you know all of this?” Alex sat up on his elbow, suddenly fascinated. This Nelly girl was the first person he’d met in the service that understood what it meant to be a German Jew.
“Because I know that the Nazis hate Jews, and to them you are even less German than I am, and I’m not German at all.”
Nelly began to examine Alex’s ankle. Her touch was light and gentle.
“You’re English, right?”
“Yep, born right outside of London.”
“So how is it you know so much about the Nazis anti-Semitism?”
“I guess you could say I read a lot. I like to stay informed.”
“I used to be a writer, a journalist.”
“That’s interesting. I’d love to hear more about it. Did you write for magazines or newspapers?”
“Both when I lived in Germany, then for a paper in New York.”
“Did you always want to be a writer, even as a little boy?”
“For me, writing was always a way to free my soul. I’ve never fit in, not even as a youngster. And sometimes if feels as if I am all bound up inside of myself. Do you know what I mean?”
“Sort of. Not really.”
“I feel as if I can’t find the words to speak to tell anyone what is causing me to hurt inside, so I just shut down and then I write. And writing eases my pain. I not only write for work, lately I’ve been finding that I want to write some short stories.”
“What kind of short stories?”
“Oh you don’t want to know. They are just tales from my past. I feel that maybe they would free me.”
“From your past?”
“Yes, you see, I spent some time in a concentration camp.”
“Oh my God!”
Alex saw the shock on her face and wished he’d kept quiet.
“It was long ago, nothing to be concerned about.” She was looking at him like he was a victim. Sometimes Anna looked at him that way, and it always made him feel terrible, weak, disturbed. He despised that look of pity. “Before I left New York, I had a good job. In fact I wrote articles for a newspaper, all about the World’s Fair. Now that was something to see.” He tried to sound cheery.
“I’m impressed. You’re famous.”
“I’m hardly famous. I am just a simple writer, not really very gifted at all, and certainly not well known, but lucky enough to find work doing what I love. And then, I’ve had plenty of other jobs too.”
“Nelly...” the other nurse who was making rounds with Nelly called to her from the other side of the infirmary. “I need you over here.”
“I’ll be right there. I’m just finishing up,” Nelly answered across the room to the other nurse, and then she turned back to Alex.
“I’d love to hear about what it’s like to work for a newspaper, but I can’t stay and listen right now. I have rounds to make. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. By the way, your ankle is sprained, not broken.”
“Well, that’s good news.”
“It is! The doc will have to come by and confirm it, but I’ve been a nurse for a while, and I’m pretty sure I’m right.” She smiled.
“So you will be back tomorrow?” Alex asked.
Nelly wound the last bandage around Alex’s ankle. She could not help being drawn by this deep, dark, mysterious man with his soft, sensitive voice that made her long to protect him. As far as she knew, Alex was the first Jew she’d ever met.
Not only did Nelly’s visits break the monotony of lying in a hospital bed, but also Alex had finally found a friend. Since his arrival in the armed forces, he’d felt alienated and alone. Nelly enjoyed the stories of his life, and the more she encouraged him, the more he talked. First he talked about the newspapers and magazines he’d written for, which led to an explanation of the article that had gotten him arrested in Germany. From there he told her about the camp and the
St. Louis
, and all about America and Anna. After several days, when he’d finished, Nelly told him her story, which was a sad one as well.
“I had a baby by my teenage sweetheart. I am ashamed to tell you this, but we were not married. As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he left town. My mother called his parents. She was livid, not only with him but even more so with me. She wanted him to marry me, but he was already gone and nobody knew where to find him. If they did, they weren’t talking. So, mom insisted that I find a career. Once you have a child, she told me, you’re going to have a very hard time finding a man who is willing to take you seriously, and chances are you won’t be getting married. After the baby came, I dated a little and found out that what she said turned out to be true. Men thought because I had a child, I’d be easy, just a girl to have fun with. At that point, I realized that I had nobody to depend upon but myself. My mother has been wonderful, helping me with the baby, and financially too, but she’s getting older and I want to take care of her now. So to earn decent money I had to learn a trade. That’s when I decided to attend nursing school. But school was expensive and we couldn’t afford to pay for it. That’s why I joined the army. They sent me to school. My mother watches my son, John Michael, and I am here serving the troops. I miss my little boy terribly, but I couldn’t see any other way. I suppose we are all doing what we feel we must in these hard times.”
“Yes, it’s true, we are.”
“Do you have any children?”
“No.” Alex shook his head. “Not yet.”
Nelly didn’t ask why, and Alex was glad because he didn’t want to talk about what happened that week that Anna spent in the hospital.
Nelly came every day and Alex looked forward to her visits. After two weeks, she helped him to begin walking again. He leaned on her shoulder. The feel of being so close to her brought an undercurrent of sexual need to the forefront of his mind. He could smell her perfume and feel her hair brush against his face as he leaned toward her. He fought the feelings, but his body responded with the physical response of a man’s desire, overwhelming him with guilt.
The friendship between Alex and Nelly continued even after Alex left the hospital. As she got to know him better, Nelly saw Alex’s loneliness and detachment from the other men, and she began to try and break him out of his shell. She introduced him to friends of hers, other soldiers, and they all joined in nightly card games. There was something about this boy that made him different than anyone Nelly had ever met. Maybe his being Jewish, forbidden and alien to her, had something to do with her desire. She knew he had a wife, and even knew how much he loved his wife. He’d told her more than once. But this was war, any day any one of them could be blown to bits. Nelly wanted him, and even if it were only for a short time, just to fill the loneliness, she would have him.