“Would you mind taking me home now? This minute?”
“How about a trip through the Tunnel of Love?”
“I’d as soon walk through a pit of snakes,” she said and began walking ahead of him.
He caught her arm. “What’s wrong with you? It looks to me like we have a splendid opportunity here. Reva has run off with your ice man boyfriend—what she wants with him, though, beats me—and here we are alone. You want to go somewhere private?”
“Not with you I don’t.”
He spun her about so that two animals and one plate went flying. “What’s wrong with you? Last night you danced in my arms so close we were like lovers. We have been lovers. All I have to do is touch you and—”
“Right!” she hissed at him. “I’m no better to you than…than a paid woman, but when it comes time to defend me, you’re a stranger. You may know about my body but you know nothing about me.”
“Amanda,” he whispered, “we’re drawing a crowd. Let’s go somewhere quiet.”
She started walking, him beside her. “Your room, perhaps?”
“What’s eating you? What’s made you so all-fired mad at me? Was it showing up here with Reva? Is it jealousy that’s making you so mad?”
Amanda opened her arms and dropped all the prizes. “Men!” she gasped. “Do you think that every time a woman gets angry she’s jealous? I don’t care if you date Reva Eiler; I don’t care if you date a hundred women. What I’m so mad about is what happened this afternoon. I may not know all the ways a union works and I may be naive about a lot of the ways of the world, but I’ll be damned—yes, you heard me—damned if I’ll let you or anyone else treat me like an empty-headed society girl. I had never participated in society until I met you. I happen to care about those people I’ve met at the Union Hall. I’ve defied my fiancé and embarrassed my family in order to help with something I’ve come to believe in, yet you and the rest of them treat me as if I have no conscience or no brain. Now, Dr. Montgomery, take your prizes and your fast little car and put them someplace not many people see. I will walk home.”
She turned on her heel, nearly tripped over a stuffed duck, then kept walking.
Chapter Sixteen
Hank managed to get her into his car. It wasn’t an easy task. He wasn’t really sure what she was so angry about, but it seemed her feelings had been hurt today at work. Twice on the drive to her house he tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t speak to him. Maybe she was feeling rotten because she was finally realizing that she didn’t love that emotionless Driscoll. It was good she was at last coming to her senses, but Hank saw no reason for her to take her anger out on him.
“Look out!” Amanda screamed.
Hank saw the two men standing in the road just when Amanda did. There was no way he could stop the car in time, so he swerved to the left to avoid hitting them. Even as he was pulling on the hand brake, he knew who the men were and what they wanted. “Stay in the car, Amanda,” he said softly. “Whatever you do, stay in the car. And don’t tell them who you are. I don’t want the Caulden name mentioned in front of these men. Understand me?”
Amanda realized that something serious was happening and now was not the time for petty private quarrels. She nodded at Hank.
The men had started running as soon as they saw Hank’s car and they reached it just as he was getting out.
“Hello, Doc,” the taller one said. He had prematurely white hair and bright blue eyes that the car headlamps showed to be glittering. “You know Andrei, don’t you?”
Hank didn’t smile. “Your last partner was killed down in San Diego, wasn’t he? Whitey, we don’t want you here.”
“That’s no way to talk to an old friend,” Whitey Graham said.
“We’re forming a union,” Hank said, “and we want no bloodshed.”
Whitey put his palms on the back of the Mercer and leaned toward Hank. “Violence is the only way to get the world to look at us and you know it. Nothing will happen unless we spill a little blood—and Caulden’s will be first. I’ve heard of the way he treats his pickers. This year we’ll get the bastard.”
Hank held his breath and hoped desperately that Amanda would sit silently in the car and not let these men know who she was. These men were fanatics, dedicated to a cause, and the cause meant more to them than their freedom or their lives or the lives of anyone else for that matter. They meant to show the world what was wrong with it and they had decided that the only way to do that was by first getting the world’s attention. They believed that Americans would overlook a thousand stories about the sad plight of the migrant worker but they would listen to stories of death and violence and bloodshed. Whitey Graham and one partner after another had traveled around America inciting different groups of migrant workers to rage against the treatment they were receiving. The rages had cost the loss of property and lives but they had forced reforms to be made. Whitey believed the solution was worth the cost.
“Caulden has the local sheriff in his pocket,” Hank said. “He’s a treacherous little man named Bulldog Ramsey and he’ll break you in half with his bare hands.”
“If he catches me,” Whitey said. He glanced at Amanda. “I hear Caulden’s daughter works for you.”
“She does and she’s a good worker. She’s helped a lot in forming the pickers into a union.”
“Forming them into a union.” Whitey laughed. “They have to take care of their bellies and Caulden knows it. Caulden holds all the cards. He can treat the pickers like scum and they can’t afford to do anything but take it.” Whitey’s eyes burned in the lamplight. “Someday we’re going to take the power away from people like Caulden. Someday a union will speak for the workers. But before that happens we have to light some fires.”
“Your fires burn people!” Hank half shouted. “Go back to where you came from, Whitey. The ULW has sent half a dozen organizers and I’m telling the pickers what a union is. We don’t need you and your guns.”
Again Whitey turned to look at the back of Amanda’s head. She didn’t look as if she’d moved a muscle since the car had stopped. “I hear Caulden’s daughter is real pretty. As pretty as this lady?”