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Ninety Days Inside The Empire: A Novel by William Appleman Williams

Into the Dining Room

Page 70

"Didn't help much either when the stock market and the banks went bust in the Big Crash. It went fast and he ran his car off the bluff one morning way after midnight. The lawyers hushed it up best they could, but your Mrs. Warrener didn't get much except this place and life insurance after everyone got paid off. 'Course she blamed it all on what she kindly called 'all those damn Nigger whores.'"

Rozanne broke the silence. "Must have been lots of angry jealousy beyond color. She's still a beautiful woman."

Elizabeth Lee did not appear to appreciate that remark, but Cat first spoke his thoughts.

"I think maybe we'd better start looking for another place to live. We got enough troubles without the Klan."

Run-Run laughed and gave Susan a hug. "Just get this lady to make some real heavy curtains."

Rozanne and even the Lees smiled, but Lette was all business. "That'd help, but Cat's got the right idea. We'll go lookin' tomorrow, Susan. I'll wear a cap and be your chauffeur."

Elizabeth did not smile. Sharply: "That's you for sure, Lette, but I think they better talk with The Judge and borrow Lieutenant Reis's car."

Cat took a long pull on his drink.

-- Ahah! Who's No. One and who's the wingman?

"See what you done, Albert! I told you you was talkin' too easy!"

He shook his head. "Better to know than not. We can't settle that so better we get on with our main business."

They did, and quickly became excited (and a bit contentious) enough to forget Mrs. Warrener. Sort of. Cat suggested that they better find out if the mimeo paper could take ink on both sides and remain legible. Elizabeth spotted the upright Underwood on the floor in a corner, hoisted it up to the table and cut a paragraph of nonsense on two stencils and they cranked it through the machine. They all laughed at the result. Run-Run delivered the verdict.

"Well, that's out till we find better paper, so how many pages are we going to run for the sample?"

Rozanne pulled a folded sheet from her handbag. "Well, here's my idea of the things we ought to put in it." As she read them out, Lette wrote them down in the spaces of the failed experiment.

"We want letters from people tellin' their stories and what they're thinkin' and what they're doin'. We need to know who's born, who's sick and hurt and died, and who's got married. And we need to know what's goin' on with our different groups. The way it is without telephones and nothing in the white man's paper lots of us don't find out till too late. If there's some room left over, then we can talk cookin' -lotsa people do that real good but the rest of us are still learnin'."

As she had started talking, Lee had slipped out to the kitchen to freshen his drink. He spoke from the doorway.

"That's good, Rozanne. We can do all that in two pages. Just run headings and do it by paragraphs."

Susan shoved her chair back, screeching on the floor, and resettled herself with one calf tucked up under her bottom. It gave her a useful few inches of presence.

"That won't do, Mr. Lee. We're not talking about some Navy Orders of The Day or a department store memorandum. This is supposed to be a newspaper so the best we can we got to make it look like a newspaper."

Albert saw Lee close his free hand into a tight fist. Cat dreamily wondered if the racial, sexual and intellectual tensions would destroy the paper before it was ever published. Albert stretched his arm as if reaching for his drink, but Elizabeth intervened.

"Susan, I see your point. That is the way it should look. Means more work, but it's right." She offered a tight smile.

"Thank you, Mrs. Lee."