 Ring-tailed
Lemur - Issue Fifty |
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Get
To Know
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The Strike Vote by David R. Yale North Minneapolis, 1972
"Brothers! Brothers! Can I have your attention for a minute?" I said. "Ray Iversen was killed in Camden Rail Yard last year. Remember? His daughter, Tess, wants to tell you something." "She's just a little kid. What does she know about unions?" Elmer McGill, a brakeman, said. "Don't waste our time." Tess gripped my hand hard. "C'mon Elmer! Ray would've wanted you to listen," engineer Willie Korhonen said, shaking his finger at the younger man. "Yup, let her speak. For Ray's sake. Gosh, I sure miss him," section hand Clarence Björk, said. "He didn't talk down to me like you do all the time, Elmer." Elmer frowned, grunted. I nodded to Tess. We stepped forward. "Say it, Tess!" Clarence said. "A lot of you guys knew my Daddy. But you didn't know we had a secret special time together. He would tell me stuff while he made breakfast." "Where was Mommy?" Clarence said. "Everyone else was still asleep. But I'd hear him in the kitchen. And run to sit next to him on the high stool by the stove. "'Morning, Bean!' he'd say, patting my head. 'What have you been thinking about?' Bean is his secret name for me. Not even Mommy can call me that." "What were you thinking about?" Willie said. "All my questions." "Like what?" "Why did Mommy cry when I started kindergarten? Why do you have to go to work when it's still dark out? Can I work on the railroad like you when I grow up?" There was a murmur from the audience. Men who had been slumping sat up straight in their seats. "He always knew the answers, even when he was flipping pancakes. You know what he told me?" "What?" Clarence said. "I could too be a railroad gal some day." "Girls working on the railroad? Men cooking? Are you kidding me?" Elmer growled. "Our union has a non-strike contract. I move we adjourn this meeting." "Listen, whippersnapper," Willie said, pointing at Elmer. "You're too young to remember when women worked on the railroad during the war. They were darned good at it, too." "They were, Mr. Korhonen?" Tess said, eyes wide. "You bet! And you could be, too, some day. What else are you thinking about, Tess?" he said. Tess paused for a moment. Then she looked up at the ceiling, hands together as though she was praying. "Daddy, you used to say, 'I'll always be here for you, Bean.' And Daddy, you are--in my heart. But that's not enough for me. Because I have questions for you my heart can't answer: Why did you have to die? Mommy says it's because the railroad wouldn't fix dangerous problems. Why couldn't you make them? Mommy says all the railroad men should've gone on strike." She paused. Tears filled her eyes. She looked directly at the audience. "Daddy, why didn't they?" There was silence. Many of the men were blinking a lot. Clarence and Willie looked stunned. Elmer McGill stood up. "We can't stri…" Obie, a section hand, took the mic, interrupted him. "Tess, will you be a-castin' your daddy's strike vote?" "Strike!" Tess bellowed. "Frank Ahlberg done broke both legs in a Camden Rail Yard accident," Obie said. "He's still in the hospital. Karen, will you be a-votin' for your dad?" "Strike!" Karen roared. "Sal Mondadori died in an accident at Northeast Lowry Yard today. Vito, you be a-votin' for your dad?" "Strike!" Vito sobbed. "Wilbur Jones lost a leg in Northeast Lowry Yard today. He's a-hoverin' at the edge of death. Ananias, you a-votin' for your dad?" "Strike!" Willi took the mic. "Do you want your kid up here next voting for you, because you're dead or in the hospital? I make a motion we strike! For Tess, for Ray, for Arne and their kids, for Frank, Karen, Sal, Vito, Wilbur, Ananias. For all of us. Strike!" A chant filled the room: "Stri-ike! Stri-ike! Stri-ike!" "Raise your hand if'n you vote to strike!" Obie bellowed. "Raise it high!" A garden of hands reached toward the sky. I knelt down, hugged Tess tight. "You did it," I said. "You sure did it!"
"The Strike Vote" is excerpted and condensed from the novel, Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps © 2024 by David R. Yale. Yale’s fiction and poetry have been published in Midstream, Response, Newtown Literary, Blue Collar Review, Pangolin Review, 2023 Labor Day Anthology, and Moonstone Arts Center’s 27th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology. His novel, Becoming JiJi, won First Place in the 2018 Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards, Contemporary Fiction category. You can find out more about Yale at his website, https://davidryale.com/ or follow him on Bluesky @DavidRYale. With a blue-collar, working class outlook, Yale writes about one of the most overlooked communities in the contemporary fiction scene.
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The Ring-tailed Lemur is endemic to the island of Madagascar
where they range from gallery forests to spiny scrub in the southern
regions of the island. They are opportunistic omnivores, primarily
eating from as many as three dozen different plant species, and
their diet includes flowers, herbs, bark and sap, particularly from
the tamarind tree. They have also been observed eating decayed wood,
earth, spider webs, insect cocoons, arthropods (spiders, caterpillars,
cicadas and grasshoppers) and small vertebrates such as birds and
chameleons. They have a slender frame and narrow face, and their
long, bushy tail is ringed in alternating between twelve or thirteen
black and white transverse bands. Their coat varies from gray to
rosy-brown, sometimes with a brown patch around the tail region.
The hair on the throat, cheeks, and ears is white or off-white and
also less dense, allowing the dark skin underneath to show through.
They are relatively large, with their average weight at 2.2 kilograms
and their body length ranging between 39 and 46 cm. The average
troop contains 13 to 15 individuals and their home range size varies
between 6 and 35 hectares. They are a female-dominant species, and
females socially dominate males in all circumstances, including
feeding priority. Dominance is enforced by lunging, chasing, cuffing,
grabbing and biting. Although the females may seek outside males,
they typically mate within their troop. Their breeding season runs
from mid-April to mid-May and gestation lasts for about 135 days.
The offspring are born in September or occasionally October. One
offspring is the norm, although twins may occur. Due to their diurnal
lifestyle, they also sunbathe; the lemurs can be observed sitting
upright on their tails, exposing their soft, white belly fur towards
the sun. They will often also have their palms open and eyes gently
closed, as if meditating. Like other lemurs, this species relies
strongly on their sense of smell, and territorial marking, with
scent glands, provides communication signals throughout a group's
home range. They use many different calls, including those which
concern group cohesion and announce the presence of predators. Despite
their relatively small brain they can organize sequences, understand
basic arithmetic, and preferentially select tools based on functional
qualities. Listed as endangered by the IUCN, only about 2,000 ring-tailed
lemurs are estimated to be left in the wild in 2017, making the
threat of their extinction serious. Their native predators include
the fossa, the Madagascar harrier-hawk, the Madagascar buzzard,
and the Madagascar ground boa. There are also introduced predators
like the small Indian civet, the domestic cat and the domestic dog.
As this suggests, they are mostly threatened by the actions of people,
such as habitat destruction, the bushmeat and pet trades, and poaching
for zoos.