Power by Howard Fast

race. From what alleys and gutters of New York and Chicago they had been recruited, I did not know, but they were not specimens to meet on a dark night.
    I climbed into the car, threw my bag onto the back seat, and we started off down the street. We drove in silence until we were out of the town, and then the boy turned to me and said,
    â€œMister, if you ain’t a proper person to bring there, they’re going to kill you. I guess you know that.”
    I didn’t know, but I said that I would take my chances.
    â€œMe, too,” the boy nodded. “If they have to kill you, they are going to be mighty provoked at me.”

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    A different armed guard stopped us this time, and he wasn’t polite. His face was dark as thunder, and he cussed out the garage mechanic and demanded to know whether he didn’t have more sense than to bring a stranger, and a city man at that, up to Fenwick Crag. I talked quickly and firmly about Ben Holt being a friend of sorts, but the two barrels of the miner’s shotgun listened poorly. There was more discussion before he let us through, but finally he did.
    Armed miners stood aside as we labored up the road, and the area around the farmhouse looked like an army camp. There must have been over a thousand men there, and it seemed like five thousand, and there were more tents, lean-tos, cooking fires, and some twenty-five or thirty old cars parked near the barn. Many of these miners must have been overseas during the war, for almost every one of them had some scrap of uniform, an army shirt, a tin hat, a cartridge sling—or khaki tape around the bottom of blue jeans, and most of them wore an arm band with the letters IMU stitched on it or marked on it.
    As we rolled to a stop near the farmhouse, a miner who wore an officer’s cap came over to the car, which was already surrounded by curious and unsmiling men, and asked who I was and what I wanted there. I told him, and left just the implication that Ben Holt had invited me back. I got out of the car, assuring myself that I was not nervous and that there was nothing for me to be nervous about. Meanwhile, the man in the officer’s cap talked in whispers to the garage mechanic. I was relieved when I saw Ben Holt pushing through the crowd, but there was no welcome on his face, no pleasure, no mask of conviviality for a bright young newspaperman.
    â€œI see you’re back, Cutter,” he said to me.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I decided to tell him the truth. It was a sensible beginning, and through the years that followed, I kept it that way. “There’s at least a hundred newspapermen back there in Clinton now. There’s none with you. Am I right?”
    â€œYou’re right.”
    â€œSo that’s my job. You’re going to make news, and I want to write about it.”
    â€œSuppose I threw you out of here?” Holt said flatly.
    I shrugged. “That’s up to you. I think you’d be making a mistake.”
    â€œWhy?” That was characteristic of Holt. If there was a chance for an explanation, he asked. “Are you on our side?”
    â€œNo. Not oh your side, not on their side.”
    â€œThen, God damn you, mister, go peddle your lies somewhere else!”
    â€œI don’t write lies, Mr. Holt. I put down what I see.”
    He pursed his lips and stared at me for a long moment, and then he said softly, “What are you after, Cutter?”
    â€œNews. That’s all.”
    â€œCrap and horseshit!” he cried. “News! What in hell is news! This is a country down here where men work like slaves and are treated like slaves! They pawn their souls to the company store, and there’s a mortgage on their kids when the kids are born. We came down here to organize a union—just that—just to organize a union, which is supposed to be a right that some Americans have. And from the day we arrived, the terror never stopped, five