The Fastest Way to Double It
Soldiers coming off the ships did not head straight home. They moved first to a demobilization camp to process their return.
There they underwent medical examinations to confirm their health, had their service records checked, settled final pay, and received discharge certificates. They turned in uniforms and gear and either received civilian clothes or an allowance to buy them. The whole discharge process alone took several days.
It was a full week before Gavin and the others walked out of the Long Island Hempstead Demobilization Camp.
South of the LES, Pier 35.
"You've all done hard work. While you were crossing the line of fire on the battlefield, we've made plenty of progress ourselves, so look forward to it."
"Boss… put that picket down first and then talk."
I slid the picket off my shoulder, set it on the ground, and looked over the proud returning veterans.
Gavin, Teddy, David, Drift.
Their eyes were nothing like before. The hollow, almost emotionless stare of men who had seen war now carried a sharp edge.
"Boss, there are some friends who want to join the gang. What do we do?"
"Oh? How many?"
"Eight for now."
"Then you should've brought them here."
"…"
The men avoided my gaze. Embarrassed by the strike, maybe. This was important work.
Anyway, the applicants had not gone home. They were waiting on Hester Street.
"I'll think about placement for a moment—"
"Boss! Emergency! Pier 36—the strikebreakers hired by management just poured in like a swarm!"
"Then we go."
I picked the picket up again and fixed the returning soldiers with a hard look.
"Call the reserves waiting on standby right now. We put them into the strike first."
"…This isn't how it was supposed to go."
"This is how it always starts."
Gavin clutched his head. Drift looked ready to say something, then shut his mouth the moment I lifted the picket again.
There was no time for a proper welcome. Events were moving too fast.
The instant Paul Kelly was driven out of the ILA vice presidency, management scrapped the five-cent hourly raise for the longshoremen. They leaned on politicians and the papers, waged a public-opinion war, and simply ignored the workers' backlash and demands.
Paul Kelly's ouster. The ambush on Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein. One blow after another had put serious cracks in my plan to seize the waterfront.
If I meant to keep control of the docks, I had to get Paul Kelly back in place.
Some people warned that striking while welcoming war veterans home would create a vicious backlash. I saw it differently. Moments like this were exactly when you poured gasoline on the strike and forced the politicians to feel the heat.
What kind of labor union stayed silent when management unilaterally tore up a deal? Dogs would laugh.
The longshoremen already distrusted the ILA. Paul Kelly stayed off the front line of the strike, but he and I were of one mind. We would shut the ILA out and drive a spontaneous walkout by the men themselves, then let it spread nationwide.
The result was the blood now staining the piers.
I felt for the men who had just set foot on home soil again, but I pulled them into the strike for a simple reason: their presence alone was an advantage in the violence we were about to unleash.
"Don't give ground! They're nothing but hired dogs!"
"That's rich coming from bastards ready to die for five cents an hour! Today we grind you into the dirt!"
Look at the blood-soaked chaos on the Pier 36 waterfront.
Pickets lay trampled underfoot. Both sides crashed together without an inch of give. We were trying to light a fire in New York Harbor. Management was terrified that fire would race across the Great Lakes and reach San Francisco and Seattle on the far coast.
That was how central—and how symbolic—New York Harbor was to dock labor. If we lost here, the strike died.
"The ILA does not protect workers' rights! They became the capitalists' dogs and only bled us for our hard-earned money! Fight! Fight and force our just demands through! Make them honor the agreement!"
Dopey Benny Fein, shoulder wrapped in bandages, climbed onto a crate and roared. Tanner, leaning on crutches, took up the cry next.
"Who dares brand us socialists and communists? We are ordinary family men, ordinary citizens of New York City, ordinary workers! All we ask is a fair wage for hard labor!"
I had told Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein to draw a hard line against any talk of socialism or communism, no matter how hot the rhetoric got.
The war was over, but the Russian Revolution's shadow still hung over America. The Red Scare was real. Last year labor leaders had already been scooped up under the Espionage Act of 1917, and the hunt was still going on in every city. Men like J. Edgar Hoover could appear at any moment and clap us in irons as spies.
If we gave them the slightest excuse, the strike could not afford even a tint of red beyond its just cause.
"All right. Let's go."
I leaned the picket against the wall, pulled two clubs from my belt, looped the straps around my wrists, and spun them once as I stepped into the melee.
A war between agitators and strikebreakers.
Crack!
I caved in a skull, stepped back, and already the clubs were swinging toward the next target. In that fashion the Pier 36 waterfront ran red with the blood of workers and strikebreakers alike.
A saloon on Hester Street.
Amid the racket and the bone-deep fatigue, the returning soldiers were tasting the sweet coolness of home in the beer sliding down their throats.
Then:
"You're telling us to jump into a strike picket the second we get back?"
At Gavin's words a Polish immigrant named Stanis slammed his mug down hard. Malachi, sitting close, piled on.
"Seriously, isn't this a bit much? It's nothing like what you promised."
"I wasn't going to say it, but the more I think about it the more it seems your so-called boss is completely useless. Better we start our own gang—"
"Shut your mouth."
Gavin's face went cold and he cut the man off.
"If you don't like it, walk. I felt a little sorry and a little embarrassed. Fuck it—bringing you bastards in would only make me feel worse for the boss. Get lost."
The temperature in the room dropped. Teddy, David, and Drift—Union men—reacted the same way. They turned their backs without a second glance.
Then:
"I'm going. Gangs are all the same anyway. Pay me and I'll do whatever."
"Same. Count me in."
"I'm curious about the young boss if nothing else. I'll size him up when I see him."
Three men drained their glasses in one pull and stood. The ones who had been hesitating shrugged and decided to come along. Embarrassed, Malachi and Stanis exchanged a look. They still hated it, but they fell in too. They simply had nowhere else to go.
Left alone, Disney grabbed Drift's arm in a panic.
"W-what about me?"
"I'll give you the flea-market address. Find it yourself."
"You said you'd take me! I've never even been to Manhattan!"
"Then stick with me for now. Oh—come to think of it, the flea-market vice president should be down at the harbor too."
"Covering the strike?"
Disney blinked.
Naive kid. Drift swallowed the words that rose to his tongue and gave a big nod.
"Of course. For the coverage."
"Aha. Then we gotta go!"
Drift and Disney were the last ones out of the saloon.
By the time the sun hung low over the west side of Manhattan, Gavin and the others were heading for Pier 36.
When they reached the waterfront overlooking the East River, the fighting was already in its final stage. Bodies writhed on the ground like caterpillars. Almost no one was still on his feet.
In the middle of it a man whose mask was soaked crimson stood tall and drove a club into the skull of the last half-standing strikebreaker.
Crack!
A dull, bone-breaking impact rolled across the pier. The last man dropped.
The one who had swung the club planted a boot on the fallen chest and bellowed at the survivors.
"Go tell the men upstairs—send as many as you want! I'll take every last one of them! Get the hell out of here before I throw you in the East River!"
That was the signal. One by one the broken men staggered off the field. Stanis stared and asked,
"Gavin… who won?"
"Our side, obviously."
"Then who's the guy in the mask?"
"Who do you think—"
The masked man strode straight toward them. Face, mask, clothes—everything was painted in blood.
"Who shows up after the work's already finished?"
"Sorry, Boss."
Boss? The veterans' eyes went round. Their gazes raked the man from head to toe and locked on the clubs still dripping from both hands.
How many had he put down with those?
None of them wanted the memory, yet for a heartbeat the image of a soldier after bayonet work—blood still running off the steel—superimposed itself. A shiver ran through every one of them.
"As you can see, our side took a beating too."
Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein were still half-healed from their gunshot wounds. The ordinary longshoremen had cleared out the moment the fighting turned serious. I had faced the management's strikebreakers with Union men alone.
Even Oliver, all muscle, was down. Patrick and Jeffrey—men in their thirties we still called veterans, thick-boned from years of slugger work—were crawling on the ground.
"You lot who still have both legs can help clean this up."
I put Gavin and the newly discharged men to work on the aftermath. When I finally faced the veterans they had brought, a square-jawed man with short blond hair spoke first.
"Normally a brawl this size brings the police, doesn't it?"
"These aren't normal times."
Management had poured in a serious number of sluggers to keep the strike from spreading. They had even blocked police intervention, hoping to snuff the thing out early. That was why the damage had run higher than expected.
"Whatever the situation. If the pay is right, I'm in."
"New blood starts at eight dollars a week."
"What's the fastest way to double it?"
"Work twice as hard."
"Simple enough."
Judging by the air around him, this one would quietly do whatever was put in front of him. First impression: solid.
"Name?"
"Lev Fedorov. Russian."
Starting with Lev, I met every man's eyes in turn.
"Isaac Feldman. Jewish."
"Eamon Donnelly. Irish."
Hans Weiss, German.
Marco Bianchini, Naples, Italy.
Vytautas Kalnietis, Lithuania.
Stanis Kozlovski, Poland.
Malachi Flanagan, Scotland.
And last:
"Chicago. Walt Disney."
That Disney?
I flicked the blood from the clubs and stepped in close.
"D-did I do something wrong…?"
"No. Just glad to meet you. I'm Kieran."
"But I heard the flea-market vice president is covering the strike here. Do you know who that is?"
Brian had been sent to Jersey City; Patrick was running the flea market now. And Patrick was currently being carried on Gavin's back toward the building with the medical station.
"…He's not here."
I started with the dejected Walt Disney and shook every reserve member's hand in turn.
I did not waste much thought on how much of myself to show. In this strike we were nothing more than sluggers hired by Tanner and Dopey Benny Fein—not the Union.
The next day Walt Disney went with Drift to the flea market. Everyone else walked into the strike.