The Awakening Read online

  “Innocent people,” Amanda said. “My father may not be killed, but ‘innocent’ people might. Does this imply that my father is guilty.”

  “Amanda, I don’t want to get into this. Your father is out to make a profit any way he can. He doesn’t care what he has to do to make a profit. I told you that he’d advertised in three states for his pickers. That’s so thousands will show up. Maybe two thousand of them will agree to a union and will walk out of the fields if the conditions are intolerable, but there will be thousands more who are so hungry they’ll work no matter what the conditions.”

  “My father isn’t an inhumane man,” Amanda said softly.

  Maybe it was having been near Whitey’s intense emotions, but Hank felt his own rising. “Your father shunned his own wife for years because before they were married she danced on a stage. He turned his only child over to a cold machine of a man who withheld food from her if she didn’t obey his every whim. I wouldn’t say Caulden is a man who is capable of putting himself in the place of others. Caulden decides what he wants and goes after it. It doesn’t matter how many people get knocked down on his way to obtaining his goal. He wants profit from the hops and the hops have to be picked. I don’t imagine he ever considered that those are people in his fields. They are profit-making machines to him.”

  “My father isn’t like that,” Amanda said. “You don’t know him like I do.” She remembered their meals together for the last few days. She refused to remember his words that he couldn’t abide her. That was her fault, not his. She got out of the car, not waiting for Hank to offer his hand.

  Hank jumped out of the car and ran after her. He stepped in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. “Amanda, whatever you feel about your father, that doesn’t matter. What matters to me is your safety. I want you to promise me that you’ll stay home tomorrow and not come to the Union Hall.”

  “What would you do if Reva were threatened?”

  “Reva?” he asked. “What has she got to do with this? You still jealous of Reva and Taylor leaving the carnival together?”

  Amanda walked away from him but he moved in front of her.

  “I want your promise, Amanda.”

  “If Reva’s life were threatened you’d probably think she was courageous enough to stand up to it. But me, I’m supposed to hide in my room because I’m just a silly little society girl, is that right?”

  Hank gaped at her. No man could ever live long enough to understand women. “If Reva’s life were threatened I’d want her to stay someplace safe too.”

  “But Reva’s poor and I’m rich and that makes all the difference in the world.”

  Hank felt as if he’d just drunk a quart of whiskey and jumped on a merry-go-round. “The unionists want you because you’re Caulden’s daughter. Amanda, promise me you’ll stay home tomorrow.”

  She walked past him. “Do not concern yourself with me, Dr. Montgomery, I can take care of myself. If not, I’m sure I can buy my way out of any situation.” She hurried ahead into her house.

  Hank stood outside, his fists clenched in anger. If he had to tie her to the bed in her room, he’d not let her expose herself to the fanatics’ violence. He didn’t understand just what she was so angry about but he wasn’t going to let some little feminine snit of hers endanger her life. He went back to his car.

  Amanda leaned against the front door of her house for a few moments. She knew she hadn’t made any sense, but lately it seemed that her emotions were always ruling her brain. Those union men had scared her, scared her a great deal. The man named Whitey had a voice that quivered with emotion and it grated on Amanda like a metal file on her skin. The man talked of murder the way a person would speak of reading a book. Today when bloodshed in connection with the union was mentioned it had seemed like something remote and not possible. But this man Whitey made violence seem not only possible but likely.

  If only there was something she could do!

  Suddenly she stopped slumping against the door. All the talk of bloodshed was based on the assumption that her father was going to force the pickers to work under hideous conditions. If there was some way she could persuade the unionists that her father was not the monster they seemed to think he was, she could prevent violence before it started.

  Even at this hour of the night her father was in the library. She had never before dared to disturb him, but lately she seemed to be doing many things she’d never dared before. She knocked on the library door, and when he told her to come in she slid the door open.

  When he looked up at her, a scowl on his face, she was ready to turn and flee. J. Harker Caulden was not a man who liked surprises, and his daughter’s unexpected appearance was obviously unwelcome. Amanda braced herself.

  “Father, I would like to speak to you about an important matter,” she said, trying to still her pounding heart.

  “If it’s about your marriage to Taylor—”

  “No, it’s not,” she said quickly. Did all men think that women only concerned themselves with emotions like jealousy and romantic love? “I have been working with the unionists, and the people seem to think you’re a…a tyrant and I would very much like to reassure them that you aren’t. I want them to know that you do care about your fellow man.”

  J. Harker put down his pen, leaned back in his chair and studied her. Things were changing in his household and he didn’t know what was causing the changes. Some of them he liked and some he didn’t like at all. He liked his wife flirting with him and he liked his daughter showing a little spunk. But he didn’t like her thinking she had the right to ask what he was doing when he ran his ranch. In the last few days Taylor had been giving him problems too. What did people like Amanda and Taylor know about running a ranch? They’d had their noses in books all their lives. Harker was beginning to doubt his wisdom in choosing Taylor as a son-in-law. Maybe he should find someone else for his daughter to marry.

  But now Amanda stood before him looking like a scared rabbit who was putting on a brave little face and demanding to know how he was running his own ranch. He was tempted to tell her to get the hell out of his office, but then he thought he’d be wiser to use his daughter’s connections to that unionist rabble. Perhaps he could help prevent any trouble. Not that it mattered much to him. Bulldog was deputizing half a dozen more men and they were going to be all over the fields during the picking. They’d stop any trouble before it started.

  “Have they told you that all I care about is profit?” J. Harker asked.

  “Why, yes.”

  “That I don’t care about the people in the fields?”

  Amanda was beginning to lose her feeling of terror. “Yes, they have.”

  “I do hope, Amanda, that you didn’t believe them. That you didn’t side against your own father.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. But I did want to hear the truth from you.”

  “I’m glad you came to me. It’s time you learned a little about the ranch that supports you. You see, this isn’t the first year I’ve had problems. For the last eleven years there have been rumblings of strikes and shootings and I’ve borne it all without ever defendin’ myself. Everyone thinks I make an enormous profit on this ranch, but the truth is I barely pull through. Those union men only think of what I sell the hops for, they never consider the expense I have to put out. Amanda, it costs twenty-four dollars to grow a bale of hops and twenty dollars of that goes to pay unskilled labor. Hell, it cost nine thousand dollars a year just for the string to trellis the hops. Nobody ever thinks of string, do they? I guess they think I get it free somewhere. And then there’s the cost of dryin’ and shippin’. And this year it’s been so dry I have two thirds the crop of last year. All these things add up.” He stopped and stared at her.

  “I’d like to pay these people twenty dollars a bale,” Harker continued. “I know they’re poor and I know they think I’m rich, but I pay them as much as I can. This year the price of hops is down so low that I’m havin’ to cut corners everywhere—but