“Quitting?” the owners had asked later at the mill. “I don’t understand, Floyd; why quitting?” “The men want me for local’s president.” “Yes. I understand that. But that’s no reason to chuck your job; that’s no reason for quitting. . . .” “All right then. Not quitting, if you don’t like that word. Let’s just say I’m leaving your side so’s I can finally get started working for my own!” Even now, as he recalled the event, his eyes began to water. He’d never in his life been so proud. He’d gone to that first meeting with his head up and his shoulders back, figuring now, by god, now he was gonna show them, the ones who’d shot his grandfather dead for sticking up for his American rights, the ones who’d sandbagged the Wobblies into an ignoble back seat in the thirties, who’d forced his disillusioned father to a shameful life and a humiliating death, who’d put him—just a high-school kid!—behind the wheel of an overloaded truck long past the age of safety so’s they could hell around in a new convertible every year off the money his risks had made them! The ones who thought they were better, the Big-Asses ...goddam if he wouldn’t show them! Yet, after more than a year at it, what had he done? What could he point to? His eyes began to water faster, and he felt that warning tickle scrape in his throat. He plumped heavily down from the clothes hamper and took a sip of water to quench the tickle, then removed his shorts and undershirt and stepped into the tub. It wasn’t nearly as warm or as full as he liked it—no good old Vick’s neither—but it would have to do. He sighed and leaned back, searching for the comfort he used to find after a long day in the woods. But the water just wasn’t warm enough. As he lay with his eyes closed, the scene at the Snag suddenly leaped back into his thoughts. Draeger. Damn, it was hard to know how to take that man. It seemed so strange to Floyd that they should both be on the side of labor. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine Jonathan Bailey Draeger in there in the thick of it when the Wobs were winning those first terrible and costly victories ...imagine him in there with pamphlets and sabot shoes, with ax handles and peavey poles, busting heads and risking his life for the right to stand up on a box in a company town and say what he thought, or for equipment safe enough it wasn’t going to kill you before you drew your time, or even imagine him doing a little reckless and mocking act of rebellion such as wearing a button proudly proclaiming himself one of the citizens that President Teddy Roosevelt had labeled as citizens who, if they weren’t guilty of any crime, were nevertheless “undesirable” as far as the USA was concerned. No, not Draeger, not this fastidious know-it-all who’d obviously never had on a pair of corks in his life, or swung a double-edge when every swing felt as though it was sinking three inches deep into a head three feet thick with last night’s liquor, or sat for hours at the end of a day with a needle under a bright lamp, digging the jaggers and berry thorns and cedar slivers out of tired fin-gers....Not Jonathan Bailey Draeger. Without any warning the tickle flared hot and crackling in his throat again. He didn’t try to stave off the sneeze this time. He let it roar through the house in all its full-volumed magnificence; it might wake the family but at least they’d know who was up and fooling around at this hour; they’d know the old man was home. It left him tingling all down his arms and thighs. A good sneeze was damn near like when you got your rocks off. It left a man feeling like he’d sure enough had something happen to him. After a minute Larry, his four-year-old, appeared at the bathroom door, rubbing the matted red hair where his head had lain on the pillow. Evenwrite scowled at him. “Here now, you little skunk ...you ain’t supposed to be up an’ roaming around.” “Hello, Daddy,” the boy said sleepily. He stepped closer to the tub and looked down at the bubbles in the stiff fuzz that swarmed from his father’s heavy shoulders down over his chest and belly like a mantle of thick orange moss. “I heard you an’ I woke up,” the boy explained. “Do you have to pee?” Evenwrite asked. The boy thought a while, looking at the hair, then shook his head. “No.”  “You sure?” “I done peed once tonight.” “Good fellow.” “Where’d you go, Daddy?” “Daddy had to see a man about some business.” “Did you win?” “It wasn’t a poker game tonight, skunk. Now you get on back to bed.” “I peed before I went to sleep.” “All right, good boy. Now back to bed.” “Good night, Daddy.” The boy scuffed out of the bathroom with short splay-footed steps, his round shoulders rolling with the walk: an infant parody of the bearlike Evenwrite movement. When Floyd heard the bedsprings squeak he reached out and pushed the bathroom door closed so the light or another sneeze wouldn’t wake the child’s brothers or sister. He slid down in the tub until the water came over his lips. His ears were submerged. He left just enough of his nose out to breathe. He closed his eyes again. Did I win, he thought, laughing warmly to himself at the boy’s imitation of the mother’s irritating question: I suppose he sees my whole life away from home as one big game of penny-nickeldime draw. And that’s about it, too, you come down to............