U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [501]
-452-of a torn typewritten sheet, the telegram was of the great est importance, she couldn't see, it was al a blur before her eyes; it was the evidence that would force a new trial, her eyes were too bad, when she had spel ed out one word from the swol en throbbing letters she'd for-gotten the last one; she was climbing a shaky hil side among black guttedlooking houses pitching at crazy angles where steelworkers lived, at each step she slid back, it was too steep, she was crying for help, yel ing, sliding back. Then warm reassuring voices like Ben Compton's when he was feeling wel were tel ing her that Public Opinion wouldn't al ow it that after al Americans' had a sense of Justice and Fair Play that the Workingclass would rise; she'd see crowded meetings, slogans, banners, glary bil -boards with letters pitching into perspective saying: Work-ers of the World Unite, she'd be marching in the middle of crowds in parades of protest. They Shal Not Die. She'd wake up with a start, bathe and dress hurriedly and rush down to the office of the committee snatching up a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee on the way. She was always the first there; if she slackened her work for a moment she'd see their faces, the shoemaker's sharply-modeled pale face with the flashing eyes and the fish-peddler's philosophical mustaches and his musing unscared eyes. She'd see behind them the electric chair as clear as if it were standing in front of her desk in the stuffy crowded office.
July went by al too fast. August came. A growing
crowd of al sorts of people began pouring through the office: old friends, wobblies who'd hitchhiked from the coast, politicians interested in the Italian vote, lawyers with suggestions for the defense, writers, outofwork newspaper-men, cranks and phonies of al kinds attracted by rumors of an enormous defensefund. She came back one afternoon from speaking in a unionhal in Pawtucket and found G. H. Barrow sitting at her desk. He had written a great
-453-pile of personal telegrams to senators congressmen mini-sters laborleaders demanding that they join in the protest in the name of justice and civilization and the working-class, long telegrams and cables at top rates. She figured out the cost as she checked them off. She didn't know how the committee could pay for them, but she handed them to the messengerboy waiting outside. She could hardly be-lieve that those words had made her veins tingle only a few weeks before. It shocked her to think how meaning-less they seemed to her now like the little cards you get from a onecent fortunetel ing machine. For six months now she'd been reading and writing the same words every day.
Mary didn't have time to be embarrassed meeting
George Barrow. They went out together to get a plate of soup at a cafeteria talking about nothing but the case as if they'd never known each other before. Picketing the State House had begun again and as they came out of the restau-rant Mary turned to him and said, "Wel , George, how about going up and getting arrested. . . . There's stil time to make the afternoon papers. Your name would give us back the front page." He flushed red, and stood there in front of the restau-rant in the noontime crowd looking tal and nervous and popeyed in his natty lightgrey suit. "But, my dear g-g-girl, I . . . if I thought it would do the slightest good I would
. . . I'd get myself arrested or run over by a truck . . . but I think it would rob me of whatever usefulness I might have."
Mary French looked him straight in the eye, her face white with fury. "I didn't think you'd take the risk," she said, clipping each word off and spitting it in his face. She turned her back on him and hurried to the office.
It was a sort of relief when she was arrested herself. She'd planned to keep out of sight of the cops as she had been told her work was too valuable to lose, but she'd
-454-had to run up the hil with a set of placards for a new batch of picketers who had gone off without them,
There was nobody in the office she could send. She was just crossing Beacon Street when two large polite cops suddenly appeared, one on each side of her. One of them said, "Sorry, miss, please come quietly," and she found herself sitting in the dark patrolwagon. Driving to the policestation she had a soothing sense of helplessness and irresponsibility. It was the first time in weeks she had felt herself relax. At the Joy Street station they booked her but they didn't put her in a cel . She sat on a bench opposite the window with two Jewish garmentworkers and a wel dressed woman in a flowered summer dress with a string of pearls round her neck and watched the men pick-eters pouring through into the cel s. The cops were polite, everybody was jol y; it seemed like a kind of game, it was hard to believe anything real was at stake.