She Didn't Mean To Do It

Strike

Strike I. When the buses stop running, the union treasurer walks on bare summer legs, in pink, swell pink heels, smiling, to the gate where her pal the union prez will come.The press walks him in, orbiting him with their hardTV lights, mikes like fists in his face.They stop; he keeps walking, like one throwing off a robe he doesn’t care for any longer, into the mass of rallying rank and file; they smack his back, grip his hands, part like the ocean for Moses; when he reaches her and the rest of the gang, he stands at the gate dead center of the packed horseshoe of seats at city council chamber’s edge. She pats his shoulder when he refuses to sit, eyes bugging out, listening to council resolve nothing. Rank and file surge a little then, excited by their anger to more anger; their chanting fills the room like steel, like polished hardware, no contract,no work, no contract,no work.It rings the roof.The boy reporter wanders the room (assignment: get quotes from the guys.You know, do they really support all that grandstanding? wouldn’t they rather go back to work?).A union driver fixes him with a voice clear because quiet under the chanting, explains, hands lain against his tee-shirt’s union logo, forty-seven givebacks,okay,and most illegal, and when  the reporter interrupts but what about, but what about, others join the man patiently explaining.Their words sucked under.The city walks.  II. When the El stops rattling over tracks, and the subway sends no more hot stink and whoosh through pavement grates,TV catches the scene. Scores walk at the camera, pass to the side. Some stop to comment, principally bad-tempered ones who scowl, finger the air, aggrieved. Fire them all, hire students! (cut)Welfare moms to drive those trains! that’d show them a little something (cut) Sanguine types swing their arms, commiserate, flying new on deep-muscle euphoria. Woo! My feet! Lost three pounds,haven’t moved so much in years! (cut) I recommend a new pair of soft-soled support shoes (cut) A commentator comes on, recites his self-pleased woe all over again. As malaise sets in (cut) Summer storms bring trees down across major roadways, screw things up the worse (cut) Really you have to want to laugh a little.Quiet in the streets.  III. The men and women—managers, board members— who run theTransit Co. ride elevators as usual to their offices. Senior newscasters with high-rank hairdos and high-salary suits follow them into featureless boardrooms where they swing their arms in for crashing corporate handbone handshakes, laugh nervously as if at jokes not quite funny.TheVice President for Communications gazes through rimless glasses to just over where the camera’s eye seeks his. What we’d really like to know is do rank and file really support all that grandstanding?Wouldn’t they rather go back to work? The managers all shift a little then, as if to try to seal off their remaining chinks and penetralia.  IV. Regional rail from the suburbs runs all through the strike. Different contract. Different deal. TV shows trains shoving along trash-treed tracks, trains that slow, slide on wet leaves, lose power, blink, rebegin; the commuters groan at each delay, go back to reading, a woman her mystery novel, another her financial page, a man, sports scores; a girl, , closes up her EntertainmentWeekly, writes in her journal.A woman in the seat behind her strains to see—throat hurts from too many cigs,ass hurts from fucking up against the house all night— and as they pass packs of empress trees, rose of sharon, mimosa, ailanthus, she thinks with the rhythm of the train of the sprinkler switching switch,switch,swatch,switch, over the grass at her old small-town house back home. It’s a comfort in this day and computerized age that on, say, the R, that goes southwest out of town, conductors still stagger live down the aisle shouting names of stops—th Street,Angora,Lansdowne, Gladstone,Primos,Secane,Morton,Swarthmore— unlike on city buses, where drivers in normal times set going the computer lady’s stay-calm voice telling you where to get off, what to change to.  V. During the strike some...