Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

The waiter arrived and took their order without insult or badinage. The two men exchanged small talk for a while, until Sterner leaned closer and peered at Karp over the tops of his lenses. "So. Tell me what you know about Red Heeney."

"Next to nothing. His wife's family happened to own the place next to the one Marlene bought out by Southold. They became friendly on the beach. Their youngest is… was, I mean, the same age as our twins. I met Heeney once at a cookout."

"What did you think?"

Karp hesitated. "Frankly? Not to speak ill, but he wasn't my type. He jumped me as a matter of fact. Wanted to punch my face."

"You probably deserved it."

"I usually do. But I take it you were a fan of his."

"Well, he wasn't a friend, if that's what you mean, but, yeah, I guess you could say a fan. What I liked about him, he was a fighter. My God, twenty-five years of organizing, and in that hellhole, too, first with the chemical workers and the operating engineers, and then with this cockamamy union they got, the Mining Equipment Operators."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Oh, it's a company union," Sterner answered with a sneer. "A piece of shit. It belongs to the Majestic Coal Company, has since the year one. Red thought he could get in there and turn it around from the inside. And they killed him for it. Something like this hasn't happened since Jock Yablonski back in '69. You remember that, don't you?"

"Vaguely. They killed the whole family there, too, didn't they?"

"Yeah, in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. Jock was fighting for the presidency of the UMW. Tony Boyle was president, a corrupt dirtbag, and they had an election and Tony stole it. Tough Tony Boyle. He had some local hillbillies do it, and we were able to trace it back to him, through the payoffs. He died in jail."

"And you're assuming it's the same deal here?"

"Absolutely. They never learn anything, these bastards. I'll tell you one thing about Red Heeney. He was the real stuff. You know, the goddamn pathetic labor movement we got in this great land of ours, they're all waiting for the one, like the Jews waited for Moses. They don't expect the revolution anymore, they're not that stupid. They just want a labor leader who won't make them sick, who won't be found with his hand in the pensions or in bed with the Mob. A mensch-a Gene Debs, a Walter Reuther. A working-class leader, with arms on him." Here he made a fist and pushed back his sleeve to demonstrate what an arm was. His was still impressive; he had acquired it humping sides of beef at a meatpacker's while working his way through college and law school. "Not one of these shifty-eyed bozos in sharp suits they got in there now. And not one of you middle-class well-meaning types either."

"I thought that was the point. The workers get rich, send their kids to college, and give them a social conscience."

"Forget it. We live in a classless society, remember? Social mobility. The ruling class lets a couple of workers' kids win the lottery and this lets them grind the faces of the poor with impunity. 'Hey, they had their chance at the gold ring and they muffed it, so fuck 'em.' Some chance! So the kids go to college, and start working, and they get some money, and have some nice things, they learn how to dress, and talk nice, and before you know it, they're voting Republican."

"That's progress," said Karp with a smile.

"Pish on progress, then! Yeah, it's progress if you win the lottery; everyone else can rot in trailer parks on a minimum wage that wouldn't support a family even if both parents work full-time."

Their food arrived, sandwiches thick as dictionaries, and Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, in cans, instead of the beautiful brown bottles it used to come in. Sterner took a big bite of his and continued to talk around the wad. "And so everything is fine and dandy, we say. Better than Russia, yeah, but that's some better! The problem is the public is too insulated now."

"How do you mean, insulated?"

"From the concrete realities. Think about it. Take a look around this place." Sterner made a broad gesture. "Every single object you see except the human bodies-all the clothes, the shoes, the tables, the plates, the silverware, the floor tiles, this corned beef sandwich, which by the way is cold in the middle, the patzers used a microwave, and this is not real Jewish rye either- ev-er-y-thing, was made at some stage by a worker using his body, and not only using his body, using up his body. And probably none of the people in this restaurant have a single friend who does that. See, that's the difference between us and them. They consume themselves making the world we live in; they're less every year, just like piles of coal. And they deserve better than what we give them, which by and large is bubkes." He put the sandwich down and examined Karp closely. "What, you're not impressed by my argument?"

"I'm always impressed by your argument. But what's the alternative to what we got now? Socialism? Great idea, doesn't work."

Sterner frowned and extended his jaw like the ram on a trireme. "Listen, do me a favor and don't talk to me about socialism, because you don't know what you're talking about. When anyone says the S-word, you've been trained to think, 'Ugh, Stalin!' You think I'm talking that shit? I spent years fighting Stalinists, and I mean literally sometimes, with this" -again the fist held up-"but I will say one thing for that shithead, for the Soviet Union, their one good deed: They scared the bejesus out of the plutocrats, which was why they let Roosevelt save capitalism, and why they finally legalized unions. Unfortunately, the Reds were too far away to scare our plutocrats enough, which is why we're the only industrial democracy with no real social democratic party. I except the Japanese; who the hell can figure them out? And when the Cold War started, our marvelous union leaders kicked out everyone who had any tinge of socialist leanings, leaving what? Gangsters and turtles. Ostriches! The result? Unions are down to, I don't know, 11 percent of the labor force? The Chinese make half our consumer goods in their sweatshops and two-thirds of our country has no unions at all. That's why Red Heeney was important."

"I was wondering when you'd get back to him," Karp said. "I take it he wasn't called Red just because of his hair."

"No, like I said, he was a true believer. And I'm not going to let them get away with it."

"What's your involvement?"

A sly smile here, a waggle of the hand. "Eh, you know, some phone calls. I'm a kibitzer now. I make suggestions."

"I thought you were a mover and shaker."

"Please. That was years ago. You want some cheesecake? On second thought, they probably ship it in from Korea. What I did do was, I called Roy Orne. A good guy. I knew his dad from the CIO days, a coal union man. So we talked, and he wants to handle it on the state level, but quick and quiet. I said I'd get back to him with some names."

"Wait a second, Saul, slow down. Who's Roy Orne?"

"What, you still don't read anything but the sports pages?"

"And the crimes," said Karp. "Who is he?"

"Dumbbell! He's the governor of West Virginia, that's who! Look, here's the situation. Robbens County, where the murders took place, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Majestic Coal Company. Not only does the company own the union, it owns the district judge, the sheriff, most of the land, all the mineral rights, the congressman, and at least one U.S. senator. This has been going on for eighty years. Clarkesville, PA, was a rough and dirty town, but Clarkesville is Scarsdale compared to Robbens County. It's in a class by itself. You know anything about the history?"

"Not a thing, except what I gathered from Heeney and his wife. Union troubles?"

"More like a war. The first thing you have to know is that when coal got big, back in the 1880s, all the way through to the 1920s, West Virginia had the worst mine safety record of any state. They were able to keep the UMW out of the state until 1902, and even after that, there were whole chunks of it that organizers just couldn't get to. Organizers were arrested as a matter of course, and beaten, all over the state, but in Robbens they were just shot, bang, and sometimes their families, too. Okay, World War One there was a boom in coal, and after the war the operators laid off the miners they'd hired and cut wages. The UMW targeted three counties in southern West Virginia as its top priority-Mingo, Logan, and Robbens. There was a full-scale war in Mingo County. The operators brought in thugs, the so-called detective agencies, the miners armed themselves, dozens of people got shot. Then a couple of miners going to a trial on trumped-up murder charges were assassinated on the steps of the courthouse by company dicks. The miners went crazy. They took hostages. The mine owners and their political allies called in the National Guard-machine guns, tanks. Airplanes dropped bombs on the miners' camps. This is in America, remember. Finally, President Harding, the old fascist, sent in federal troops and the miners surrendered. That was the end of the war and the organizing drive. The coalfields didn't get unions until the New Deal came in. You knew any of this?"