Power by Howard Fast

answered him, his voice was so soft that I had to strain to hear.
    â€œI had two brothers, sir.”
    â€œOh? I didn’t know that, Ben.”
    â€œDaniel, fourteen years older than I. Franklin, fifteen years older.”
    â€œWhat happened to them, Ben?”
    â€œThe Harkness cave-in. Eighteen ninety-nine. It’s forgotten by now. They worked together, as a team.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œWell, that was a good offer from Pittsburgh. I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me, Mr. Aimesley.”
    â€œI wish it wouldn’t end there, Ben. A lawyer is well armed. You can do a lot as a lawyer, Ben.”
    â€œYes, sir. I know that. But first I have to figure out what I want to do.”

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    3
    So my letter to you, dear Alvin, goes on and on. I put it aside yesterday, and later that evening I rummaged through the drawers of my old bedroom chest. Father never changed my room, never got rid of anything, and there in a drawer I found the diary I had kept for three years, from the age of fourteen to the age of seventeen. So you see that I was a very usual young lady who kept a diary during just those years when a girl is expected to. It continues up to a point, and my point was the day I met Ben Holt. Late at night on that day, I made the following entry:
    Today I met a divine, awful young man. His name is much more exalted than he is, since he is only a coal miner. His name is Benjamin Renwell Holt, and he has caused me nothing but trouble, so I hope I will never see him again and that Father forgets the whole thing. Cousin Jimmy also arrived.
    That was the last entry I ever made in the diary. Can it be that when you first touch the manner and meaning of your existence, a teen-age diary is put aside? Anyway, during dinner, my Cousin Jimmy Aimesley said something about Ben Holt. He had arrived as Ben was leaving, and Father introduced them. I remember that Jimmy was terribly impressed with Ben’s size, bearing, and a certain quality of magnetism so striking in Ben, and he mentioned this. Jimmy was small and underweight, and had always admired and envied big men.
    â€œI don’t think he’s anything to admire,” I said.
    My father raised his brows. “Then you know him, Dorothy?”
    â€œNo, I only opened the door for him.”
    â€œBut you know he’s no one to admire,” my father went on. I think I was forewarned; I knew that tone of my father’s; but I had to go on and hit out somehow against Ben, I couldn’t stop, and I said,
    â€œHe’s just a miner, but even a miner’s hands and neck could be clean when he comes calling on Sunday.”
    Father’s face clouded, but he would never allow an argument during dinner. “That’s enough, Dorothy,” he said quietly. “We’ll discuss this later.”
    After dinner, Father gave Jimmy a copy of Mr. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat , an old favorite of his which, he felt, would amuse Jimmy and improve his outlook on the world, and motioned me to follow him into his study. Poor Jimmy was no great prize, but to be marched off like this on his first night with us was almost more than I could bear, and in the study, I stared at Father morosely.
    Bluntly, with no moral precepts to introduce the matter, Father said, “We’ll stick to the facts, Dorothy. They are more enlightening than speculations on egalitarianism. You feel a personal affront in the fact that Mr. Holt did not remove the signs of his trade before he came calling here.”
    â€œIt is Sunday. He could have washed.”
    â€œI’ve raised you poorly,” Father sighed, “but we’ll let that go by the board for the moment. How the hell do you know that he didn’t wash?”
    I was taken utterly aback, and I simply stared at him. He had never used that word to me before, or the tone—or looked at me in such a cold and melancholy manner. I was speechless, but he went on