Read Online Clarkton by Howard Fast - Free Book Online Page A

place of the average man, the average Joe. He don’t want to die by an atom bomb. To you and me, it don’t matter. But the average guy, he don’t like this thing; it’s unnatural. That’s a factor.”
    He had already finished lathering Sawyer’s face, and now he was beginning to shave, with quick, competent strokes. He knew his work, and regardless of the part of it with which he was engaged, his smooth flow of talk was not interrupted.

4. D riving down Concord Way toward the plant, Lowell found himself thinking of his daughter in terms of Elliott Abbott, something which—and this he was willi’ng to admit to himself—would have been inconceivable only a few days ago. His resentment, his feeling of frustration in terms of his wife, had to crystallize somèwhere, and the very fact that he was beginning to realize how much he had leaned upon Elliott Abbott during the past years helped to focus it upon the doctor. Yet mixed up in that and added to the crazy feeling he had that his daughter was in love with Abbott—a natural, understandable adolescent crush, he was also willing to admit—was a sense of envy. This morning, for the first time, he had been able to see his daughter from a point of vantage, and the sight disturbed him. He wondered whether he would remain close enough to Abbott to talk to him about it, and then he admitted that even if this were the case, it was something he could not possibly bring up.
    He was close to the Fourth Avenue gate of the plant now, and he slowed down, so that he could present his pass to the picket captain in charge. Again, as on all previous times, since the beginning of the strike, it occurred to him what an element of the childish, of the absurd, there was in the antics of the little group of men and women who marched monotonously round and round in front of the gate, carrying their signs, which called so gracelessly for a wage raise, for the union of black and white, for unity, for solidarity—for all those other things which, it seemed to Lowell, were unwieldy slogans and no more. They themselves were either new at this thing or had forgotten the last time they were out on strike—so many years ago now—and betrayed the fact in a sort of self-consciousness, which they attempted to hide but were unable to.
    Three more-than-middle-aged men on the line—they were probably inspectors, Lowell thought—carried furled umbrellas, the height of incongruity on that sun-drenched morning, and to complete the picture of respectability, the old gentlemen wore long black overcoats, silk scarves, and felt hats. Even though there was no one in particular watching them, they would every so often pick up a ragged chant, “… black and white, unite and fight …,” keep it going for a while, and then allow it to fade away. In this, the three old gentlemen were unable to join, and it was the clean voices of the young folks; the girls in their slacks and cheap fur coats, the boys in their motley of army uniform and outdoor clothes, that sounded through. Lowell noticed that, as always, there were half a dozen extras standing around, ribbing the pickets in a good-natured way occasionally, and making sure that the fires in the big oil cans, perforated with holes, and known from coast to coast as salamanders—perhaps because they turned red when heated long enough—were kept going.
    To Lowell, it was a charade, and one that he found peculiarly unpleasant. It annoyed him that, even though they recognized him and his car easily enough, he was forced by the very block of their bodies to stop, present his pass, and have it countersigned by the picket captain before he could proceed to enter a piece of property he owned—and which, by virtue of his ownership, as he considered, gave them the wherewithal to exist. This morning, it was more annoying than ever, and when the company guards finally opened the gates, he fairly