Читать книгу The Vultures - Mark Hannon - Страница 21

16.

HR brought Tom into the used bookstore, his blonde hair bouncing with enthusiasm as he approached the old man in the worn suit.

“Hey man, c’mon over and meet Carl Vincent! He’s the founder of the World Worker’s Party.”

The older man nodded at them and continued speaking to three other students, “The party was in the right to support the USSR’s invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact’s occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is the responsibility of worker’s states to fight the capitalist revanchists, just as the Vietnamese are fighting American imperialism today.”

Vincent looked over at the two youths. “Well, hello. From your picture in the World’s Worker paper you must be HR, the party’s leader on campus,” he said, shaking hands with HR. “And this man?”

“Tom Brogan, sir. I’m a friend of HR’s.”

“Well,” Vincent said, “I’m glad to see the movement is so active on the U.B. Campus. You know, I used to live and work in Buffalo, years ago. I worked at Wickwire Spencer in Tonawanda. Where do you two work?”

“I’m a warehouseman at A.M. & A’s downtown,” Tom said.

“I’m a writer,” HR said.

“I see,” Vincent said. “We’ve got to expand our membership amongst the workers. Although it’s great that the students are responding to the party’s message, the only thing that will bring down capitalism is victory in the workplace. The idea must come from the shop floor. You must get me some of your writings, HR, while I’m in town.

“When I was working at Wickwire, there was a dispute about Korea. I had worked there for two years and I was making headway among the steelworker’s local there. When Truman invaded Korea, the bosses whipped up the McCarthyites in the plant and they ran me out for handing out pamphlets about the real reasons the U.S. was at war. Your writing, young man, must always tell the truth about the capitalist motives if we are to get anywhere with the working people, particularly in this town where so many send their sons overseas.”

Tom thought about the other guys at work. Most of the older ones were all for the war, even agreeing with the “bomb them back into the Stone Age” rhetoric. The younger ones were worried about getting drafted, getting killed. They didn’t say much in front of the older guys, and they sure weren’t going to any protests. He didn’t know about these World Worker’s Party guys, but this war was so fucked up. Maybe those guys destroying the draft records were right. Maybe if Rory…Tom dropped his head and promised himself to call his parents to see how Rory was doing.