"But here—I brought you a pair of me socks. They may be large." He held out a pair of black socks. Jake hesitated. "It's all right," said the young priest. "I've another pair."
Jake took them and put them on. They were several sizes too large, but why should he care? Already his toes were luxuriating in the unaccustomed warmth. They would make a layer of wool between his feet and the wet snow that seeped into his worn-out shoes. Every day that he had worked in the mill, he had helped make woolen goods for sale, but he'd never before owned anything made of wool. He nodded his thanks. He didn't know how to put it into words.
He was taken to the rectory kitchen for his supper, and what a supper it was. It was almost enough to turn a boy not only into a Catholic but to thinking seriously about becoming a priest. Did they eat like this every night? Meat and potatoes, and great slabs of bread with gravy, and three kinds of vegetables, and soup, and coffee and some kind of sweet, heavenly pudding afterward.
He didn't mind at all that he hadn't been invited to eat in the room with the big table where the priests sat but in the kitchen with Mrs. O'Sullivan. What a stroke of luck that was. She kept filling his plate and made no comment on how he ate or how much. His belly was near to bursting, but he couldn't make himself stop.
It was Father O'Reilly who brought the meal to an end. He came into the kitchen just as Jake was downing the third serving of pudding. "Still at it, are we, me boy?"
His mouth was so full, he could only nod.
"Well, that's fine. You need some meat on those bones of yours."
Jake slid his chair back from the table and stood up. He was eyeing the door, plotting a route of escape around the priest and out into the dark of the winter evening.
"No need to be afraid, lad. I don't intend to call the police."
Jake looked up, startled.
"God will hold you accountable, you know. For profaning the sacred elements and stealing from the poor." How the devil did the man know? Jake made a lunge for the door, but the priest caught him and spun him around. "I'm not through yet, me lad. You will hear me out, like it or not."
Jake didn't like it, but what choice did he have? The man's grip wasn't about to let him go. He watched half fascinated, half terrified while, with his free hand, the priest reached down into a deep pocket in his black robe. "Here," he said.
Jake's eyes nearly popped out of his head. The man was holding out a silver half dollar.
"Yes, take it. Buy some supper for the rest of your family, and then tell everyone to go back to work. This strike is the work of the devil. Tell them that. They have no business turning their children into beggars and thieves whilst they follow these godless radicals. Will you tell them that?"
Jake nodded. Though just exactly whom was he supposed to tell? His father, who hadn't worked a day in the last two years and was likely furious that Jake was not scabbing in the mill?
"And don't let me catch you in the church again unless you're praying in the pew, do you hear?"
Jake nodded furiously.
"On second thought, why don't you take your prayers to Holy Rosary? Let Father Milanese deal with you for a change. I think we've about had our fill of you here at Saint Mary's." He smiled, as though he were joking, but Jake couldn't be sure.
The priest let go his grip and gave the boy a swat on his bottom, which Jake was happy to take as a signal that he was truly dismissed with new clothes on his back and fifty cents in his fist.
Later he asked himself why a hundred times. Why, with a half dollar in his possession, did he use most of it to buy whiskey to take to his father? He must have been crazy to do such a fool thing. Yet that is exactly what he did, and almost proudly. He'd show the old man how well he was doing in the middle of this cursed strike—while others were freezing and starving, he had new clothes and money to spend on a present for his pa.
There was no one at the shack when he got there. For once he was half disappointed that his father was gone. He set the bottle right in the middle of the cot where his pa couldn't miss it and left to find a place to spend the night that wasn't a trash heap. He didn't want to ruin his new clothes quite yet.
A Proper Caller
Rosa wasn't going to school anymore. She was terrified by the idea of navigating the streets, crowded with workers and with the militia and police always present. But whenever there was soup to be had, Mamma dragged her to Chabis Hall for the meal and the meeting that followed.
Big Bill and Mrs. Gurley Flynn, along with the local strike committee members, were going around to the various halls, cheering the workers on, telling them that the union was on their side. It seemed to be true: union workers throughout the country were sending money so that the strikers could have soup for their belli
es and coal for their fires. The union had a name—the Industrial Workers of the World—but no one ever called it that. If a person was feeling formal, it was the "IWW," but usually it was simply the "Wobblies." The Wobblies' motto was "Solidarity." That meant they weren't like the big unions, who represented only one kind of worker. The Wobblies believed in standing united across various skills and national origins.
The only woman on the local strike committee was Mrs. Annie Welzenbach, who was a skilled fabric mender and a Polish Jew, to boot. The rumor was that she made more than twenty dollars a week, but that didn't stop her from siding with the lowest paid workers in the mills, Italian and Catholic though they might be. And Mrs. Welzenbach stood so tall, the police were terrified of her. "Get out on the picket line," she'd say, and thousands cheered and obeyed, turning a deaf ear to the representatives from the big-name unions who claimed that the Wobblies were lawless radicals and who warned the workers how dangerous the strike was and how futile.
Even Rosa admired Mrs. Welzenbach. Anna had told her that one time, after a march broke up, she'd seen Mrs. Welzenbach start down Common Street, probably headed home, and suddenly a couple thousand workers were marching right behind her. The militia arrested her once. They went to her house in the middle of the night and dragged her out of bed, so it was said. She was free on bail by the next afternoon and went straight to another rally. That was the day Mrs. Marino went up to her, almost throwing herself at Mrs. Welzenbach's feet, to declare: "If any hurt you, I die for you." There was something in Rosa that made her envy a woman like Mrs. Welzenbach—young as she was and almost rich—who could inspire such loyalty.
Everyone knew she was helping lead the strike because she truly cared that people were cold and their children starving. She had told Mr. Billy Wood so right to his face, and he had turned around the next day and claimed that the strikers were being led astray by outside agitators who did not know the good relations he had always had with his workers. Mrs. Welzenbach was not an outside agitator—she was like most of them, following her parents into the mills when she was fourteen years old. But she was different from Mr. Billy Wood. She hadn't forgotten what it was like to be a poor, unskilled worker in the mills. If Rosa had been going to school, she would have told Miss Finch about Mrs. Welzenbach. Or she imagined that she would have. She might have been too timid.
She kept reading her history book over and over. If only she had the courage to go out into the street by herself, she would have gone to the library and gotten more books. She didn't want to fall too far behind in school. It was hopeless to think she could teach herself arithmetic, but she could read history and geography and books that would improve her vocabulary and strengthen her hold on English grammar, which was being buffeted daily by the various assaults on it around the kitchen table.
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