The Collected Short Stories of Harriette Simpson Arnow

White Collar Woman

White Collar Woman Written 1938-39 and signed H. L. Simpson of Cincinnati, this story focuses on social activism in which the author had a strong interest: the rise and demise of a newspaper union, or press guild. Her husband, Harold Arnow, a Chicago reporter before they met, had first-hand experience with guild membership. This story has never been published. She didn't look it. Poetic type, some love sick school boy might have called her. Thin she was, with thin hands, and a look of brownness in her hair and eyes that seemed sometimes pure brown and then again nothing more than lights glinting. It was the lights that gave her away. Under the unshaded wire enmeshed bulbs along the alley, her hair had a red look with the brown, and her eyes had green sparks in the brown. She smiled and her teeth were small and even, set close together and tooth tip touched tooth tip, strange matching they made with their even whiteness under the shadows of her lashes like fringe on her thin cheeks. Her blouse was ripped a little in the fight, but she was quiet now, smiling with the green lights in her eyes, and tooth tip touched tooth tip. One of the policemen glanced at her, but her smile wasn't the smile of a woman for a man ... nothing asking or begging, just smiling. Maybe it was the . 140 . WHITE COLLAR WOMAN smile that made them polite to her, gentler with their sticks and heavy hands than with the others, but then I really couldn't tell. There were a lot ofstrikers, and a lot ofscabs, and a lot of noise; cries ofScab, Fink, and Rat, and answering cries of Reds, Screwballs, Communists. There was some blood, too, but it wasn't so much mixed as the noise; it was mostly on the strikers. I suspect it started in the patrol wagon, or maybe they only smiled there. I never knew. She and Kerney and the rest of us Guilders who had struck were out ofjail and back on the job ... for a while. * * * I remember the girl and Kerney had gone and hit deadline before I ever saw anything. It was at a gypsy joint on Clark Street I saw them one night, not hearing the gypsy music, not drinking the gypsy wine, not seeing me or any of the other night shift men ... we'd come in late ... just seeing each other, and Flannigan pointed them out to me. "Look at the way they are," he said and smiled. I remember I smiled too. I was proud of that smile, but I couldn't brag about it to anybody, though next night I bragged around the office about drinking two quarts of needled red wine and never feeling it more than milk. I remember how big Kerney looked hunched over the little table, lots bigger than I. A red blooded, gutty man he was, big fisted as a copper, but with a head on him and a good reporter and Guilder. He was quick talking, wise cracking, and his sharp tongue and his chesty way of tossing words about had helped us plenty when we organized. He was handy with his fists, too; more than one fink had felt them. To us little men, the puny ones with soft hands and heads hunched from reading and writing copy, he was something of a hero. That night I saw him a hero; that is, I could see him as that girl saw him, look at him reflected in her mouth and eyes and the tilt of her head. It did not feel so good at first. But she deserved something good. * * * "I've thought your case over, and tried to figure out what's wrong with you," he said. He was Mullane, the managing editor, nice guy. He talked with bitter sadness; his nice heart was hurt. "I'm disappointed in you. After all I've done for you. I don't know what's wrong with you. Your copy is flat; you're • 141 . OHIO & KENTUCKY: THE 19305 slow; you make mistakes. You almost got us in a libel suit when you wrote that story about the mayor ..." "But that was a year ago," I said. "Besides whoever heard of a politician suing for libel?" "I saved you from being fired then," he said. "And I'd...