Memories of Another Day (15 page)

Jimmy nodded and turned to another man. "What about the city mill?"

The man cleared his throat. *'They got a reg'lar army there. More'n a hundred Pinkertons an' maybe three hundred scabs. They been comin' in by truck all night."

Jimmy was silent for a moment. They were hopelessly outnumbered. He could count on perhaps seventy men at the very most. There were several hundred women and girls who could be used for picket duty, but on a day like this he was reluctant to put them out there where they could be hurt. And hurt they would be. The Pinkertons were armed and under orders to let nothing keep them from getting into the mill. He drew a deep breath. He dreaded the coming of daylight.

"What time will our men get here?" he asked.

"Any minute now," Roscoe answered. "They'll all be here by six o'clock."

"They ready?"

Roscoe nodded. "They comin' with shotguns an' rifles. The Pinkertons ain't goin' to jes' walk in."

"We're goin' to have to make up our minds," Jimmy said. "We cain't beat 'em in both places. We got to decide which one we want to keep 'em out of."

The men were silent,

"I vote we make up our minds to let 'em have the new mill. Ain't but ten percent of the machinery

hooked up. They cain't produce beans once they in there."

''I don' lak it," Roscoe said flatly. 'Two people in my family died to keep 'em off our Ian'. The idee of 'em jes' walkin' in—"

'"They won't jes' walk in," Jimmy said. "We put ten sharpshooters in the forest an' the hills aroun' the entrance, an' they'll git mighty cautious about walkin' up that road." He paused for a moment. ''But the city mill, that's another story. If'n they git in there, they kin produce fiiU blast. Then we're finished. If that mill begins roUin', it's all over but the shoutin'."

Jimmy stood on the comer looking at the mill on the other side of the street. Already the pickets, most of them women, were walking four abreast in front of the closed gates. From inside the gates and along the wire fence that ran along the sidewalk in front of the mill, the guards stared silently at the signs carried by the chanting pickets.

"Lincoln freed the slaves. How come we're still here?"

They shouted back their own answer: "Nobody tol' the textile mill!"

Then another shout: "Freedom!"

A man came running down the street toward Jimmy just as the seven-o'clock whistle blew. At the same moment, the rain began to fall. "Three truckloads of scabs!" he shouted. "Just tumin' down High Street!"

Jimmy looked across the street. The pickets were still marching. The Pinkertons inside the fence began to move toward the gate. There was a scraping sound of an iron chain being pulled, and the gate began to swing open.

Jimmy felt the pain knot his stomach, as real as any pain he had ever felt. He turned to the men around him.

Suddenly it all came home. It was him they were

watching. It was him they were waiting for. It was him they looked to for leadership in the midst of this madness. He felt old, so very old. Molly Ann was right. What was he doing here? He was no hero.

Then the feeling was gone. He held up his hand and started toward the picket lines. Silently the men followed him. He stopped in front of the line. ''AH right, you ladies," he said in a strong voice. 'Time fer you to go home."

They stood watching him, not moving.

He spoke again, his voice more urgent this time. "You heard me, ladies. It's time to go home!"

There was a moment's silence. Then one of them called out, "We'll stay right here, Jimmy. It's our fight too!"

"But ladies," he shouted, "there might be shooting!"

"They'll have to shoot us too, then!" one of them shouted back. "We're not goin' home!"

The women began to lock arms, and in a moment they formed a living chain in front of the open gates. They began chanting again. "Freedom. Bread and butter, not chains!"

The trucks rounded the far comer and headed down the street toward the mill. They were halfway down the block and the lead truck showed no sign of slowing up. Jimmy moved out in front of the picket line and faced them. Suddenly there was silence behind him. The trucks kept moving toward them.

"Out of the way!" a guard yelled from behind the wire fence. "You'll all get killed!"

No one moved.

The lead truck jammed on its brakes and rolled to a stop just a few yards short of the picket lines. Men began to jump out of the backs of the trucks. Pinker-tons, big, ugly and menacing. They formed a line facing the pickets, each of them holding a club or an iron pipe in his hand, their bowlers sitting squarely on their heads. At a signal, they began to move forward.

Jimmy held up a hand. *'I warn you, men. There are women here. I won't be responsible for your lives if even one of them gits hurt!"

The Pinkertons stopped uncertainly. ''Hiding behind their skirts won't save you!" one of them shouted. "Come out an' fight like men!"

''We're here to stay whether you scabs like it or not!" a woman shouted from the picket lines.

The other women picked it up. "Scabs! Scabs! Scabs!" they chanted.

An iron pipe came hurtling through the air. Jimmy heard a woman's scream behind him. He glanced back quickly and saw a woman falling, blood streaming from her head. He swung back to face the Pinkertons. "I'll kill the next man who does that!" he yelled, pulling the gun from his belt.

Jimmy saw the man with the rifle on the top of the truck almost before he heard the bullet hiss past his ear. There was another scream. This time Jimmy didn't turn to see who was hurt. He fired. The man fell crazily from the top of the truck into the street. He lay there, blood oozing into the round hole in his bowler, which somehow still clung to his head.

"Let's git 'im!" one of the Pinkertons shouted. He pulled a gun and fired at Jimmy.

Jimmy's shot caught him in the chest, blasting him backward, just as another Pinkerton fired with both barrels of a shotgun. Jimmy heard the screams and fired again. The shotgun fell from the man's hands as he clutched at his throat. He started for Jimmy, the blood welling through his fingers, a horrible growling sound coming from inside him. Then he fell forward, rolled over and lay face up in the street, the blood leaping up from his severed jugular like a pulsing red fountain.

The strikers and the Pinkertons stared at each other without a word. Jimmy motioned with his hand. Quietly, the men came from behind him and placed themselves on either side, forming a long line in front of the

women. Shotguns and rifles suddenly appeared in their hands. These men, with their grim faces, were mountain men and farmers, and it was their women who had been fired upon and hurt.

Slowly Jimmy unlatched his revolver and replaced the three bullets that had been fired. He snapped the chamber shut and turned back to the Pinkertons. His voice was low, but they could hear him clearly through the lightly falling rain. "Pinkerton pay y'all a bonus fordyin'?"

Without answering, the Pinkertons slowly began to move away. A few minutes later, the trucks started back down the street. Except for the three dead men lying on the cobblestones, the street was empty when they heard the big iron gate creak closed.

A cheer came up from the strikers. "We beat 'em!" "WewonlWewonr

Jimmy's face was somber. He glanced at the bodies in the street, then back at the triumphant strikers. "No," he said, a strange foreboding knowledge within him. "We lost."

And he was right. Two days later, the National Guard marched into Fitchville and all they could do was watch silently as the scabs entered the mill under the protection of the government.

let the sher'f an' me handle it. Might have taken longer, but we'd have gotten 'em back in. Now they got themselves some help from the Textile Union up North, an' they're lookin' up to Jimmy Simpson like he was a god or somethin'."

"But he's a murderer!" Cahill's voice was shocked. *'He killed three men."

"Pinkertons, you mean," Fitch corrected. "An' only after they fired on their women. We mountain folk don't take kindly to havin' our women shot at."

"Now you're defending him," Cahill accused. "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm cm your side, Mr. Cahill," Fitch said smoothly. "Don' think I ain't been hurt by all this. Business in my store has fallen away to nothin'."

"Then act like it," Cahill snapped. "You do some-thin' to get that Simpson out of our hair and the people back to work or we're through here. The company has been losmg forty thousand dollars a month, and they've given me exactly one month to get the miUs back in operation or we're closing up here and moving the plants somewhere else."

Fitch was silent for a moment. He looked up ai the Philadelphian. "Jimmy's goin' into court fer the killin's week after next. Maybe they'll take care of him. We got Jedge Harlan on our side."

Cahill laughed derisively. "But the jury will all be locals. Simpson will walk out of the court not only a free man but more of a hero than ever. Whatever you're going to do, you'd better do it before he walks into that courthouse. Because the day he walks out of it, the mills close down and we begin to move out."

When Cahill and his fiiend left, Sam Fitch lit up one of his cigars. He looked across the small office at the sheriff, who hadn't said a word all through the meeting. "What d'ya think, Jase?"

"That Mr. Cahill's a hard man," the sheriff said.

Fitch nodded. "City folk'll never understand us."

''Never," the sheriff agreed.

'*What about Jimmy? Your boys keepin' an eye on him?"

''We cain't git near him," the sheriff said. "He don' go nowhere 'thout six or seven men all armed with him. An' that Jew lawyer from New York don' make life any easier. Ever' time we bust one of their men, he's at the courthouse with a habeas corpus almos' 'fore we got the cell door closed on him, and he gits the man out."

"Ah, sheeit," Fitch swore. "I alius knew that Jimmy Simpson was goin' to turn out to be a bad one."

The afternoon sun streamed through the dusty store windows, cutting patches of light in the gloom. The bell over the door jangled harshly as it opened. Jimmy looked up. So did all the other men in the store, their hands unconsciously dropping closer to their guns. When they saw who it was, they relaxed and resumed their conversation.

Morris Bernstein hulked into the store. He didn't walk, he clumped, his size eleven city shoes pounding under his six-foot-three and two-hundred-and-ten-pound frame. One wouldn't think to look at his broken nose, the scar tissue under his eyes and the cauliflower ears that he was an attorney. But he'd gotten that face working his way through college as a semipro club fighter. He made his way directly to the table behind which Jimmy sat.

"Well?" Jimmy asked.

"They said no," he answered flatly.

Jimmy masked his disappointment. "Did you explain to 'em it was jes' fer another month?"

"I did everything except whistle 'Dixie,' " Nforris said. "They still refused."

"They give a reason?"

Morris looked at him. "I want to talk to you pri-

vately."

I.

Jimmy didn't answer for a moment. Then he got to his feet. "We'll go out in the alley in the back."

He started for the door, but one of the men blocked his path. "Wait a minute. We'll check it out for you first."

Jimmy stood there while two of the men went out the back door. "You're bein' too careful," he said.

"Cain't be too careful," the man who was blocking his path said. "They tried to git you four times already. I'm not about to let 'em git lucky with a fifth."

The two men came back into the store. "It's okay," one of them said.

The man in front of Jimmy stepped aside. Jimmy took a step, then stopped. "Thank you, Roscoe," he said.

Roscoe Craig smiled through thin lips. "They got my gran'pappy an' my brother that way. They ain't goin' to git any more of us."

Bernstein followed Jimmy out into the alley. The sun's rays were bright after th^dark of the store. They stood there a moment; then Jimmy turned to him.

"Okay," Jimmy said. "Let me have it."

Bernstein stared into his eyes. "The strike is finished."

Jimmy didn't answer.

"They're pulling me out. They're not sending down any more money." His voice was flat. "The executive board says they have no money for lost causes, they have to place it where it counts."

"What makes 'em say that?" Jimmy asked.

"They learned in Philadelphia yesterday the company's getting ready to move the mills farther south. They gave Cahill his orders. The mills open in one month or they move."

Jimmy was silent.

Morris looked at him. "I'm sorry, Jimmy."

Jimmy's voice took on a bitter edge. "So that's how it is. We break our ass fer a year. We git ourselves killed, chased out of our houses, starved an' shit on,

an' some men who never been to this town, sittin' in some city in front of their comfortable tables, decide it's all over with us."

''It's the realities, Jimmy," Morris said. ''We can't win 'email."

"I don' care about all of 'em!" Jimmy said hotly. "Jes' this one. This is my friends, my town, my people." He looked at the lawyer. "What do I tell 'em now?"

The lawyer saw the anguish in his eyes. "You tell them to go back to work." His voice softened. "Tell them there will come another time. Losing a battle doesn't mean the war is lost. Someday the union will be here."

Jimmy looked at him. "The union don' mean shit to these people. They began the strike without the union, they'll carry it on without the union." He started back into the building.

"Jimmy!" the attorney called him back. "I got their permission to stay down here for your trial."

Jimmy nodded wearily. "Thank you, Morris." He hesitated, then added, "I know you did the best you could. I appreciate that."

"What are you going to do, Jimmy?" the attorney asked.

"I don't have much choice, do I? I got to tell 'em what you said. This is their strike. It's still up to them to decide what they want to do with it."

"And you, Jimmy?" the attorney asked. "What are you going to do after it's all over?"