Labor Day

Labor Day. A union member wrote a letter to the editor about the decline of unions. The newspaper also ran ads for sales at Wal-Mart. Somebody was laboring.

We should march with the Teamsters, said Ben.

The ghost of Jimmy Hoffa? Rose shuddered. Let’s stay home.

The last time she had marched she came home with a black eye. A raging woman had jumped off the curb into the crowd and bashed her face, screaming, Anti-American bitch! Terrified, Rose had yelled, I’m marching against the war. She had pushed the woman as hard as she could, but when the woman fell down she jumped back up like a pop-up figure and threatened to sue Rose “for damages. “

Calm down, lady, said Ben. My wife is the one who’s bleeding.

Hey, Rose said in her best Jane-Eyre-as-governess imitation, You are not suing anybody. You attacked me.

The police, who knew the woman, intervened. They said she was off her medication and asked if Rose wanted to file charges.

No, I’m all right, Rose said wearily. Just make sure she has proper care.

The police drove the woman to the hospital. Rose felt vaguely guilty.

Should I send flowers? she asked Ben wildly.

Are you nuts? he asked. Your face is swelling, honey. You need an icepack.

I know it’s nuts. But she’s SO nuts. I’ve never been in a fight before.

Rose was disillusioned. She believed in passive resistance. But she had refused to stand back and be clobbered, despite a training course in non-violence. The blow to her head was so severe that she wore sunglasses for a week and pretended she had an eye infection so she wouldn’t have to explain her black eye. It wasn’t as though she had been beaten up by rednecks. Her attacker had been a madwoman off her meds.

I’ve never seen that woman at any other protests, Ben said. Don’t be afraid.

I’m not afraid. I just don’t feel like it, Rose said.

Ben decided to march. Promise you won’t mope around the house.

I won’t.

No point in getting dressed. She wandered around the house and finally settled down to reread her favorite book (for the seventh time), NO NAME by Wilkie Collins.

She listened to a Little Red Songbook CD: old labor union tunes.

After reading 100 pages of NO NAME, she watched part of the U.S. Open. Tennis comforted her. As she watched the tennis ball fly, she thought about the madwoman at the anti-war protest. It sometimes occurred to her that the attack of the madwoman had been a ruse, that the woman had been there to upset and scatter the protesters.

She wrote a letter to the unknown madwoman:

Dear Madam:

You are less benign than the madwomen in the novels of my favorite writer, Wilkie Collins. Have you bashed anybody else on the streets lately? You gave me a black eye. it has healed. What has not healed? My belief that I am secure at political marches and anti-war protests. Are you secretly an agent of the FBI, employed to interrupt peaceful protests and terrorize American citizens? We no longer have Kent States. Instead, protesters go quietly to jail--it is occasionally reported--or are discouraged from attending by fear of the actions of violent bystanders.

I have not been to a protest since our encounter. No one has seen you at any other marches. That means you and I are now in the same boat.

Apparently you have driven me mad.

Sincerely...

Rose got dressed. She went outside and batted a tennis ball against the garage. Every time she hit the ball, she pretended she was batting the madwoman back onto the curb. If only she had batted the madwoman before her eye had been blackened...if only she had seen what was happening... if only she had been like Bruce Willis’s character in UNBREAKABLE.

When Ben came home, he found her sorting out fall from summer clothes.

Good day? he asked.

Not bad, she said. By the way, I’ll march against the war with you next week.

Oh, good.