Lonely Crusade Read Online Free PDF Page A

face—the furious incredulity at Todd’s outburst of prejudice, the tortured sympathy for Lee’s predicament, the indecision as to what steps he should take, the deep aversion for the entire racial scene, bafflement, hesitancy…Until then, Lee had been watching him. Now he looked away. He did not want to see the compromise he thought might come next, for after that he would not have anything at all for Smitty.
    For a moment longer the silence hung, pregnant with expectancy. The man in the blue serge suit slid from the table and crossed the room.
    “I’m Joe,” he said, extending his hand to Lee. There was the slight indication of an accent in his voice, which made his words seem battened down.
    Lee never shook a hand with more gratitude.
    Relief flooded Smitty in red and white waves. “Joe’s the man.” The words poured out of him. “Joe’s the big boss, Lee. I’m only his helper. Joe Ptak, Lee Gordon.”
    For an instant Lee was conscious of the attention of the others in the room. Then he forgot them in the hard, calloused pressure of Joe’s grip, in the cold, level scrutiny of Joe’s slate-gray eyes.
    “Hello, Joe.”
    Joe Ptak nodded without replying. There was an impenetrable aloofness in his manner, an uncompromising rejection of human instability. His body was stocky, barrel-chested, rooted in the earth; his face was blunt with features that seemed hammered and his head was square.
    Still scrutinizing Lee, he raised a cigarette with his left hand from which the first two fingers were gone, parked it in the corner of his mouth. Then he ran his two remaining fingers through his bristling shock of iron-gray hair, and turned away.
    Voices came back into the room, and Smitty resumed the introductions.
    Lee met Benny Stone next, a short, curly-haired Jew with sharp, dark eyes, who was acting financial secretary of the local. Benny’s effusive greeting brought a recurrence of the old troubling question: On what side did the Jew actually play? Was Benny’s effusion a slap at Todd or a pretense for Joe?
    But it went from his mind as he turned to meet the others—the three Mexicans and two white women and other white men—all of whom were volunteer organizers, waiting for the day shift to begin. They were cordial but not effusive, and beyond the simple salutation there was nothing any of them had to say.
    With the business of the introductions over, Smitty said a few words to Joe and left. Lee was alone; no one spoke to him and no conversation included him. He took off his raincoat and, holding it over his arm, went to stand by the stove. A searing sense of inadequacy assailed him as he struggled desperately against consciousness of his race.
    He was too tight, he told himself. Making too much of a mountain from a molehill. There was no need to be so tight, no sense in it. No one was going to shoot him. No one was even thinking about him. That silliness of Todd’s was nothing—a vulgar exhibition by an ignorant white. It had not hurt him, and all it had done for Todd was to bring down disapproval.
    But the old suspicion that there is always a conspiracy against a Negro crowded back into him. His thin black skin kept feeling white eyes—measuring him, calculating, conspiring. And his futile, sterile pride was bleeding.
    The sound of the whistle came as a reprieve. Quickly the room emptied of all but he and Joe. Hanging up his coat, he turned to Joe.
    “Well, what do we do?”
    “Take it easy,” Joe replied.
    But shortly the room was filled with volunteers form the graveyard shift. Joe did not introduce him, but Lee had the emotional advantage of having been there first, and his manner was more relaxed.
    At Joe’s direction, he sat at the table and copied the names, badge numbers, department numbers, and home addresses of workers who had joined, or had promised to join, the union, dictated to him by the various volunteers. As before, several were Mexicans, but he identified the majority of whites as