Read Online Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser - Free Book Online

began:
    St. Louis woman
    with her diamond rings,
    got my man . . .
    They laughed nervously, and stopped to listen again.
    â€œThere!” said the woman.
    Rapid and thin, the high frail sound clapped out between the hills. It could not be the record. That went on:
    . . . by her apron strings,
    wahn’t for diamonds . . .
    Crazy and American in this town. Moncada. There, the sound again, high and unmistakable. They had been to too many movies to mistake it.
    â€œRifles!” cried Peter.
    Peter’s lip straightened suddenly, vibrated like wire; Olive’s face took on an amazing beauty.
    â€œMaybe it’s only backfire,” said the tall woman weakly.
    From up the car, a calling grew. A woman’s voice went past as the woman ran loosely down the corridor, shrieking.
    â€œThe guns! The guns!”
    â€œCAN YOU TELL where the sounds come from?” Helen asked.
    â€œI don’t think John Reed 75 could tell, in these hills,” Peter smiled whitely. “We could be in the middle of a thing like that, I’ll bet, and not know what was going on.”
    â€œWell, he was always at the bottom of a flight of stairs when something was happening at the top, wasn’t he?”
    â€œAnd the story of the waiter—he was asked where he was during the Revolution, and he said, ‘It was during the special dinner, sir.’”
    The sounds had stopped. Only the radio was still singing blues.
    â€œBut this isn’t revolution!” the sickly woman said. Her words came trembling. “This is nothing like that!”
    â€œWe can’t just sit here,” Peter was saying sharply. “I want some coffee. Come and find some coffee; I want to find out what this is all about!” He stood up, and the two other women stood with him. “All right,” they said, under their breath.
    Olive and Helen wanted to stay. Helen could not have moved. To see the gun, the threat, to fear the plane, to feel the radio emerge, meant one thing; but the clap of sound in the hills, the voice shrieking through the corridor!
    â€œDon’t go far,” Olive said pleading; and, then, looking at his face, “sorry.”
    His look changed. “No, you’re right,” he said, and kissed her, bending over her, his hair falling forward as he leaned. “You’re right; I’ll be right back, I’ll just go up to the place where the truck left from.”
    The women were waiting outside. Then they were gone.
    â€œIT WAS SO tragic, to hear that gun,” Olive said slowly. “No matter what it signifies. I don’t belong to any party.” She stopped a moment, looking out the window. “I wish he hadn’t said that about the child.”
    â€œHe looked as if he wanted a child, very much,” Helen answered.
    â€œHe does—I don’t know why I should be telling you this,” she said, shy then, abrupt. “Except that this train makes you feel that you’re not in—oh, I don’t know—in Europe, in society. Don’t let me get whimsical,” she mocked herself.
    â€œYou get angry at that idea?”
    She turned her face away. She knew which idea. “All this war,” she said after a minute.
    War! In a slow admission, Helen took the word finally. Yes. This is it.
    â€œWe’ve had our heads out of the window,” Olive said. “Peter’s been talking to some of the men. They talk about having to win, and their look goes bright. Do you feel the fate here? They tell us this is death unless the country is won in this war.” She spoke in a rush of feeling, sudden and fatalistic, that made Helen turn in on herself even more, not liking to face the romanticism of the words “fate,” and “death” in the bright sun, with Olive’s eyes swung on her, firing up steadily.
    â€œIt doesn’t seem political, even,” she said. She was speaking flatly, hating her self-consciousness.
    â€œMarx,