Gilded Mountain, page 27
At last the men drifted away to the night shift or their bunks in the boardinghouse. Oskar Setkowski eyed me and scooped up his little sister, asleep in his arms. A tenderness he showed toward Eva made me like him, though not to marry, thank you. After they left, the stable yard was quiet, the bottle dry. I yawned. It was two o’clock in the morning. “We’re offered cots at Mrs. Quirk’s tonight,” I said, and rose to leave.
“I’m happy here in the hayloft,” said Mrs. Jones. “George will escort you down the lane. And warn me if you see those hired gangsters coming with their Gatlings.”
* * *
George Lonahan steered me toward the boardinghouse. The chips of marble under our feet glowed opalescent, as if many old moons had shattered and fallen there.
“Here we go, step lightly,” he said. “Don’t let the Pinkertons hear us.”
“That speaking,” I said. “It was frightening, it was—”
“You did good,” George said. “Just like I said: right from the heart.”
“They’ll call me a socialist and a Red and agitator,” I said, testing the words. “They’ll call me a knocker.”
“That’s high praise,” he said. “I’d call you brave.” He put his arm around me like a conspirator, and we marched along in matched steps as if we were in league. Comrades. Were we? I wished it, but my legs were weak, my blood thin, and I trembled. Was it the effects of the whiskey or the fault of my escort, holding on.
“Mr. Lonahan—”
“George,” he said. He stopped with his hands on my shoulders, inspecting me in the bright moonlight. “Are you all right now?”
“A little bit upside down,” I said. “Also backward.”
“Are you right side wrong, then, too, Sylvie Pelletier?” He pushed loose strands of hair off my face with the tips of his fingers, so I shivered. “How shall we put you right?” I feared he might kiss me, then feared he would not. He whispered again the word comrade, along with my name, murmured so as to steal himself through the cracks in the rackety cabin of my heart. He had me by my hands and I did not pull away. His eyes were kind, searching my face. And then.
Something startled us. A faint singing of metal, the low hum of the electric tram wires vibrating at an hour when no trolley should be running. We froze in our skins.
“Shhh.” Lonahan pulled me in, as if to protect me, and I was enveloped in heat and the smell of his tobacco.
We heard a clacking now. Below the ridge, a light moved winking through the trees, and when the tram came to the clearing, we saw the cargo: two dozen men.
“Goddamn Pinkertons,” Lonahan said. “Ruin the moonlight itself.”
I did not think he meant the moonlight that was ruined. Whatever romance was in the moment got lost in the tumult of events. George turned and pulled me rapidly back to the stables. In alarm, he rousted Jenkins out of the hay. “Mrs. Jones must not get caught. They’ll take her to jail. Go fast, Sylvie, and warn her.” He sent me to the back room, where Jenkins had given her a bed. She snored away, still in her boots.
“Mother!” I shook her shoulders. “Wake up. Pinkerton agents.”
She sat up fast and put on her hat. “Those mongrels. Disturbing the peace.”
“Sylvie, take Mrs. Jones to Kerrigan’s place and wait there,” George said.
“You can’t get rid of me yet,” she told him. “I want another talk with the men.”
“The Pinks will arrest you.”
“Let them. Get away to file that charter.” She strode down the hill.
“Stick with her, Sylvie, can you?” Lonahan said. He started off, then turned with a look of regret. “I’ll have to make myself scarce for a while.” He gave me a wistful kiss on the cheek. Our hands caught, fingers lacing then unlacing, reluctant. He disappeared in the darkness.
I wonder still, had he not gone away then, how things would’ve been different.
* * *
Mrs. Jones picked along the branch road to Cabin One. “Here’s Kerrigan’s,” I said, but she shushed me and kept on toward trouble, to the loading yard, where Pinkerton agents were swarming in a mess of torches, hands on their shooters. The quarrymen came pouring down from the boardinghouse, brandishing picks and shovels. The night was split with shouts and whistles, but not shots, not yet.
“This way.” I tried to pull Mrs. Jones in a safe direction, but she linked my arm and towed me in a terrifying route through the crowd in the narrow yard. Spills of lamplight cast their shadows against the rock wall in distorted shapes. The Pinks formed a barrier across the tracks. Mother went boldly up to them, smiling in their stony faces.
“Hello, boys,” she said.
“Halt.” Sheriff Smiley had his pistol out, pointing. “Halt or get shot.”
“We’re only an old woman and a young girl, son. Why are you afraid of us?” She disarmed them with our supposed weaknesses, age and girlhood, like secret weapons.
“I got a warrant,” Smiley said, “to arrest Mary Jones and George Lonahan of the UMW.”
“Oh, goodness me!” she said, sweet as syrup. “For what reason?”
“Trespassing. On Company property. We’ll put you in jail.”
“You do that.” Mrs. Jones smiled. “If you’re a lapdog for a mine owner, you can be one for me. Get on the telephone and tell Padgett I am going to rouse all his slaves. I’ve already woken up these ones here. Just look!”
Fifty men had come out in the middle of the night. And all the women. Mrs. Tchachenko had a child on her hip. Eva had her Polish auntie by the hand, both of them brandishing broomsticks. Mrs. Quirk was there, banging a pot with her soup ladle.
Then Mr. Tarbusch pushed through the crowd. “Mrs. Jones! You’re nothing but an outside agitator.”
“The Pinkertons are the outsiders,” I said, as if speaking up were contagious. “We were only peaceful and talking. That’s our right.”
“Listen up, boys!” Mrs. Jones cried. “Your boss brought these Pinkertons to slam you down. They’re not the law of the state. Just the private army of the overlord.”
“We’ll have you shot,” Tarbusch said.
“Will the owner shoot me, or will he meet me? Is he scared of an old woman? Let Mr. Padgett meet me face-to-face. I’m not afraid. Not of him or Mr. Rockefeller or the Governor. Least of all you hired flunkies. If the time comes when a mine owner will intimidate me, I want to die in that hour. Shoot me and be damned.”
The men clapped, cheering and raucous.
“We have a warrant.” Smiley brandished his paper.
“Keep it in your pill bag,” she said. “Goodbye, boys, I’m under arrest. I’ll see you as soon as the union pays my bail. If the richtocrats won’t give you the eight-hour day, then strike! And when you strike, pay no attention to trained monkeys like these fellas with their tin badges. The judge in Gunnison is a scab. While you work, he serves injunctions for the money class. While you starve, he plays golf.”
“Get along, now.” Smiley came at Mrs. Jones with a hand on his pistol. She offered him her arm, smiling as if he’d asked for a dance.
Two Pinkertons hustled us toward the pump house, where we were locked under guard. The men skirmished outside. Somebody shot off a gun. Mrs. Jones could feel me jump and tremble beside her.
“We’re all right now, Sylvie. They won’t shoot the women.”
“No,” my captor said, laughing, “we’ll hang you from that tree.”
“I’d like to pull the rope,” said his snickering friend. I saw with a start that this was Carlton Pfister, the boy who’d tortured an old mule and scratched my arm bloody. He’d grown into a pimpled variety of rodent, eyes dull and furtive.
“What gives you the right, Carlie Pfister, to keep us here?” I said.
“What give you the right to talk?” he said. “I’m the head night watchman at the pump house. What are you? A loudmouth girl. Oughta learn to shut your trap.”
Oh, I hated him. Hated. There’s no redeeming a lout like him.
Tarbusch blew his whistle. The shouts faded. When a weak gray light finally sighed under the door of our holding pen, Mrs. Jones and I were brought out to the flatcar and seated behind a load of stone.
“Get that woman outta here,” Tarbusch cried.
Behind us in the yard, Oskar Setkowski and Dan Kerrigan lurked, smoking by the derricks. “Stand your ground, lads!” called Mrs. Jones. Her words evaporated in the wind as the tram picked up speed down the swoop. “Whoo-ee.” She held on to her hat. “I like the excitement.”
“Me too.” In the rush, my hair streamed loose like some kind of flag, and as the moon sank over the mountains, my courage rose, tender and pink as the dawn sky.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AT 5:45 IN THE A.M. the agents prodded us off the trolley into the mill yard. “You have twenty-four hours, Mrs. Jones, to leave town,” said Sheriff Smiley. “If you don’t go, you’ll be held in the jail, then removed to Gunnison.”
“Is there a bed in your prison?” said Mrs. Jones. “It’ll save me hotel fees.”
“Take your young friend with you, that’s a warning.”
“Oh, Sylvie’s been warned,” said Mrs. Jones. “She’s been warned all her life.”
We headed toward town. “Mrs. Jones,” I said on impulse, “you mentioned you’d like to meet with the Company President.”
“The monkey suits will never talk to the likes of me.”
“I am acquainted with J. C. Padgett. He might listen. I’d ask him.”
“Would you now?” She beamed. “Show me where to find him.”
We marched toward the Company offices, me without a plan, only a strange determination, to appeal to Jace. I’d test his character, show him—what? The mud on my dress, the bits of hay. He would see he couldn’t hurt me now. I was a comrade. A columnist. I would bring him Mother Jones.
She barreled along, humming “Turkey in the Straw.” I brought her up the steps into the offices, pulled by invisible strings of new recklessness, to run toward trouble.
The front desks were empty. Jace Padgett would hardly be awake at this hour. But then I noticed a man studying some drawings tacked to the far wall. The ducktail at the back of his head was too familiar. At the sight of it, I was afraid again, of the hold he had on me and what I might do now.
“Jace,” I said.
He turned around, startled. “Sylvie! What a surprise! Good morning! Who’s this charming lady with you?”
“Mrs. Mary Jones,” I said. “Mother Mary Harris Jones.”
“You?” He stared at her in her widow’s weeds. “The dangerous radical?”
“I am indeed. The wicked old woman. In truth, I am harmless as a kitten.”
“I’d be well advised to show you out,” said Jasper. “But I’ll make an allowance since you’re here with my friend Sylvie—she’s as good a reference as can be.”
That’s what I was to him, a reference. Oh, he made me so mad, that Jace.
“Young sir,” said Mrs. Jones, “I have a particular request.”
“I’m all ears, madam.” He spoke with the benevolence of a man in charge.
“You say you know Miss Pelletier,” Mrs. Jones said. “So you know the tragedy of her father’s death.”
“I do.” He did not meet my eye. “I feel terrible about the accident.”
“It was no accident,” I said. “The inquest spelled it out. My father died of deliberate malice—because he was organizing a union.”
“It will happen again, to another man, and then another,” Mrs. Jones said.
“And what will you do about it?” said.
He looked away from my question, sorry as a child scolded. “I—have apologized—” Jace was red, stammering. “On behalf of—”
Mrs. Jones stepped toward him with maternal calm. “Son, I’m here to offer you a surefire salve to your conscience. An appeal to your goodwill. May we sit?”
He ushered us into his private sanctum, his name on the door in gilt. Jasper C. Padgett, President. Within minutes Mother Jones began to work her elfin spells.
“Mr. Padgett,” she said, twinkling, “you’re an educated man, are you not?”
“Well, yes, I’ve just graduated Harvard University.”
“Then you’ve read the Stoics and are at least acquainted with the work of the great Victor Hugo or Upton Sinclair’s novels of the working class.”
“I’m currently enthralled by the work of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois—”
“Aha!” she said, delighted. “Du Bois is the voice of his people. So I wager you’re a man of conscience, not only inheritance. I’m told your moral compass steers you in the direction of justice.”
“I hope so, Mrs. Jones.”
“The men in your labor camps have just hours ago voted to bring the union in, to join together in the great human struggle for health and well-being. They are worn to the bone. They have been shorted pay all winter.”
“We will get the payroll out this week,” Jasper said. “I absolutely intend to.”
“You must know they can’t get ahead without organizing.”
“And why shouldn’t they organize? I don’t have a problem with it.”
“I think you do,” said Mrs. Jones. “Why else would you hire Pinkerton thugs to stop the quarry miners from the exact thing we’re discussing?”
Jace looked baffled.
“Last night they ambushed the workers at Quarrytown,” I said. “With guns.”
“Ladies, I must correct you,” he said. “Colonel Bowles sent a security detail to raid an illegal still of bootleggers—and apparently, a brawling of drunks got out of hand.”
“It was not a brawling of drunks,” I said. “It was a peaceful meeting.”
“To organize the union,” Mrs. Jones told him. “If you do not trust my reporting, ask this young lady here. She is a journalist.”
In that moment I was not so much journalist as jealous jilted jezebel, but I stored up this journalist along with comrade. Such words had begun to shape me now that butterfly was out of the question. If you are called a thing, sometimes you become that thing, for better or worse.
“Sylvie?” Jace said. “You all right? You don’t look well, Sylvester.”
The soft Virginia vowels of his concern. The trace of sweet talk in it, the odd fond nickname, weakened me a moment, until I remembered myself, pulled the bones of my spine straight.
“It’s just as she says,” I told him. “The men only wanted a union. But the Pinkertons arrested the organizer and Mrs. Jones. And me. They locked us in the pump house.”
My erstwhile beloved swallowed this news with disbelief. “You were arrested?”
“For no reason.” I found myself proud of it, the arrest like a badge of honor.
Mrs. Jones leaned toward him. “What I plead for is a renewal of the bond of brotherhood between the classes. A reign of justice on earth that shall obliterate the cruel hate that now divides us.”
“I plead for that too,” cried Jasper. “But—I must ask: Aren’t you a Bolshevik?”
“Some people call us Bolsheviks,” she said. “Some call us Reds. What of it? If we’re Red, then Thomas Jefferson was Red, and a whole lot of those people who turned the world upside down were Red. What is socialism? What is Bolshevism? Who were the rebels of the American Revolution? What, then, is a union? I’ll tell you: It is the soul of unrest that is behind all these movements.”
“I’ve been warned,” Jace said, “that unrest is antithetical to profits.”
“A union is made to quell the need for revolution. I am not with the Wobblies. I am for the workers.”
“I see that, madam,” Jace said, “and since my father has charged me with running this operation in my own way—”
“Your way might lie along the side of justice,” Mrs. Jones suggested.
“My own father,” I said quietly, “whom you claimed to admire—”
“I did,” Jace said. “Everybody liked Jack Pelletier.”
“He fought for the union,” I said, fighting to appeal to whatever fondness he’d ever had for me, whatever kindness or honor he might possess.
The look on Jasper Padgett’s face migrated from guilt to sorrow, and then it appeared as if an idea had dawned on him, as if it were his own thought, not placed there by us, an old lady and a girl. He raised a philosophical finger. “I’m certainly all for justice,” he said. “And I have the authority to begin negotiations with a workers’ union. So I’m damned if I won’t do it.”
At these words Mrs. Jones was all aflower with compliments. “You certainly are a fine young man. The future of our country lies with leaders like you. A model American. Lonahan of the United Mine Workers will be in touch directly, along with Dan Kerrigan, who is president of the local chapter. And then, my new friend,” she told him, firm as a schoolteacher, “you’ll negotiate in good faith.”
“You have my word.”
“Speaking is the start of doing,” I said, quoting George Lonahan.
“Correct,” said Jasper. “I intend to act.”
“I’m not here to bust you up in business,” Mrs. Jones said. “On the contrary, we hope and pray for your success. Sure, there’s enough of it to go around.” She headed to the door with me alongside.
“Sylvie?” Jasper said. “Might you spare a minute?”
“Stay,” Mrs. Jones said, like an order. “I’ll run along before the Pinkertons come to throw me in the clinker.”
I was on my own now.
* * *
“I’m dying to show you something,” Jace said. With great excitement, he led me to the far wall. Blueprint renderings were tacked alongside sketches and diagrams. He pointed to a drawing of a soldier standing on a tall column. “Remember the Daughters of the Confederacy? You recall we won a big contract for this monument to the so-called faithful slave? You must remember.”
I remembered.
“Faithful!” He spat the word, pointing to the sketch where LOYALTY appeared on the monument’s pedestal. This was a frieze of carved human figures: an enslaved woman with a white baby strapped on her hip, a muscular bare-chested man working a plow. On their backs they held the Confederate soldier aloft, up there with eagles and that traitorous cross-barred flag. “I tried to cancel the order for this—travesty,” Jace said. “Too late. The stone was already shipped. But see, Sylvie, here’s an antidote—”
