"That's him," I says, pointing to the little shiny car.
It makes me laugh now to remember the sergeant's face. But another policeman was coming, running. And folks stopped and stared. And I slipped out the station door quick, and turned the corner and dodged straight across the factory yard and took to my heels.
It was after six o'clock, so the streets were alive. I walked along, never noticing where I was going. I looked down the street. As far as I could see there went the heads, men and women, bobbing along home. Half of them, I thought, had just the same kind of box to live in that Mis' Bingy and I had. Yet there they was, going to work every day by clockwork, always thinking something good was going to come of it. I tramped along with them. There was something good in the way our feet all come down on the walk together. In spite of everything, I felt fine. But I guess that was because I was young and well. Some of them that passed me, their heads didn't stay up and their feet dragged. And they didn't seem to know each other was there. If only they could have felt the good feeling of marching together, it seemed to me they'd be less tired.
"They've got to find out different," I thought. "How can they?"
The most of them crossed east on Broadway and under a covered place with bells clanging. I saw the sign "Brooklyn Bridge," so I went up the steps and out on the bridge, and I walked clear across it and back again. I'll never forget that walk. I was looking at the others and looking at them—the folks that was workers, like me. I seemed to know something about them they didn't know. It seemed as if I had to do something.
A bunch of little young girls passed me, all laughing. They seemed years younger than I was. I thought of them—of the day they'd had in the factory—bad air, noise, work that was dead before it was born, and maybe a home where there was rows, or maybe just nobody at all; and somebody like Arthur Carney coming to help them be a little less lonesome. And then I faced it honest: Suppose he hadn't had flat hair and light eyes. Suppose he had looked different, so that I would have wanted to go to dinner with him?
I begun to walk fast, back to town. Across the bridge I went in a little down-stairs place to get something to eat. I was thinking so hard I never knew I'd ordered a quarter's worth till I got the bill. But I didn't care much. Everything else seemed all of a sudden to matter so much more.
That night, when I walked into the meeting, they all stared. I s'pose the word had got round that I'd gone with him. I whispered to Rose that I wanted to say something, and she give me a chance right away. When I got up on the platform and faced 'em, I wasn't afraid. I was glad.
I told them that just because I had got to leave, I didn't want them to think I was going to forget. And that they mustn't forget, either. "It ain't caught me yet," I told 'em. "I'm new and from the country, and I can see what it is that you're getting, like you can't see. And what I say is this: Quit your hoping. Just know that until we get together ourselves, nothing will come out of the factory except what we're getting now. Quit your hoping, and help. That's my last word."
And yet I guess you can't blame anybody for being afraid of being hungry. I'd never been hungry yet, so I was brave.