Ned Sawyer liked it. He didn’t like it. He had his orders. The only reason the sheriff met him at the railroad station at Birchfield that morning was to show him the way to the Birchfield mill and to the communist camp. The Governor of the State had come to a decision regarding the communists. “We’ll hem them in,” he thought.
“We’ll let them fry there in their own fat,” he thought... “the fat won’t last long”... and Ned Sawyer commanding the company of soldiers that morning also had thoughts. He thought of his sister Louise and wished he hadn’t gone into the military service of his State. “Still,” he thought, “these soldiers are only boys.” Soldiers, the kind of soldiers who belonged to a military company, at a time like that, when they are called out — they whisper to each other. Rumors run through the ranks. “Silence in the ranks.” Ned Sawyer called to his company. He barked the words out — barked them out harshly. At the moment he almost hated the men of his company. When he had got them off the train and had made them fall into company formation, all of them a little sleepy-eyed, all a little worried and perhaps a little frightened, dawn was coming.
Ned saw something. There was an old warehouse near the railroad station at Birchfield and he saw two men come out from under the shadow of the warehouse. They had bicycles and, getting on them, they rode rapidly away. The sheriff hadn’t seen that. Ned thought of speaking to him about it but didn’t. “You drive on slowly to this camp of communists,” he said to the sheriff who had come in his car. “Drive slowly and we’ll follow you,” he said. “We’ll surround the camp.
“We’ll hem them in,” he said. At the moment he also hated the sheriff, a man he didn’t know, a rather fat man in a broad-brimmed black hat.
He swung his soldiers off along the street. They were heavily accoutered. They had their blanket rolls. They had belts filled with loaded cartridges. On Main Street before the court house, Ned halted his men and made them fix bayonets. Some of the soldiers — after all they were mostly raw boys — kept on whispering in the ranks. Their words were little bombs. They were frightening each other. “This communism. These communists, they carry bombs. A bomb can blow up a whole company of men like us. A man doesn’t get a chance.” They saw their young bodies torn by a terrible explosion in their midst. Communism was something strange. It was un-American. It was foreign.
“These communists kill every one. They are foreigners. They make women public property. You ought to see what they do to women.”
“They are against religion. They will kill a man for worshipping God.”
“Silence in the ranks,” Ned Sawyer cried again. In Main Street, when he had halted his men to have them fix bayonets, he saw the little stationer sitting on the court-house steps and waiting for his friend the jailer, who hadn’t yet appeared.
The stationer sprang to his feet and when the soldiers had moved on he also got into the street and limped along behind. He was also a communist hater. “They ought to be wiped out, every one of them. They are against God. They are against America,” he thought. Since the communists had come to Birchfield it had been good to have something to hate in the early morning before he got out of bed when his feet hurt. Communism was some vague foreign idea. He didn’t understand it, said he didn’t, said he didn’t want to understand, but he hated it and hated the communists. Now the communists, who had so disturbed things in Birchfield, were going to get it. “God, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. God, it’s good,” he muttered to himself limping along behind the soldiers. He was the only man in Birchfield, besides the sheriff and his two deputies, who saw what happened that morning and all the rest of his life he was to be made happy by that fact. He became an admirer of Ned Sawyer. “He was as cool as a cucumber,” he said afterwards. It gave him something to think about, something to talk about. “I saw it. I saw it. He was as cool as a cucumber,” he cried.
The two men on bicycles who had ridden out from under the shadow of the warehouse near the railroad station were scouts from the communist camp. They rode off to the camp, driving their bicycles at a furious pace through the main street and down the sloping road past the mill and over the bridge to the camp. There were several deputy sheriffs on guard about the mill gate and one of them shouted. “Halt,” he shouted but the two men did not stop. The deputy took out his revolver and shot into the air. He laughed. The two men rode quickly over the bridge and into the camp.
In the camp all was excitement. Dawn was breaking. Leaders of the communists, suspecting what was coming, had been awake all night. Rumors of the coming of the soldiers had also reached them. They had kept their scouts out. It was to be a test. “It has come,” they said to themselves, when the bicycle riders, leaving their wheels in the road below, ran up through the camp. Red Oliver saw them arrive. He heard the shot from the revolver of the deputy sheriff. Men and women were now running through the street of the camp. “The soldiers. The soldiers are coming.” The strike at Birchfield was to come to something definite now. This was the critical moment, the test. What would the communist leaders, the two young men, both pale now, and the little Jewish woman Molly Seabright so admired, who had come with them from New York — what would they think now? What would they do?
It was all right to fight deputy sheriffs and citizens of the town — a few men, for the most part excited and untrained as they were — but what of the soldiers? The soldiers are the strong arm of the state. Afterwards it was said of the communist leaders at Birchfield, “Well, you see,” people said, “they got what they wanted. They only wanted to use these poor mill people at Birchfield for propaganda. That’s what they were up to.”
The hatred of the communist leaders grew after the affair at Birchfield. In America, the liberals, the broad-minded people, the intellectuals of America, also accused the communists of this cruelty.
The intellectuals do not like bloodshed. They hate it.
“The communists,” they said, “will sacrifice any one. They get these poor people killed. They get them thrown out of work. They stand aside and push the others in. They get their orders from Russia. They get money from Russia.
“I’ll tell you what — it’s true. The people are starving. So these communists get in money. Tender-hearted people give money. Do communists feed the starving? No, you see they do not. They will sacrifice any one. They are insane egotists. They use any money they get for their propaganda.”
As for the matter of some one getting killed — there was Red Oliver waiting at the edge of the communist camp. What would he do now? What of him?
During the strike at Langdon he had fought, as he thought, for labor, and then, when it came to the test afterward — it would have meant going to jail — it would have meant facing down the public opinion of his own town — when the test had come, he had drawn back.
“If it were just a question of death — a question of walking up to it — of just taking it — taking death,” he had said to himself. He remembered with shame the incident of the seven dollars hidden in his shoe in the tramps’ jungle, his lying about the money to the companion picked up on the road. Thoughts of that moment, or his failure in that moment, clung to him. His thoughts were like wasps flying about his head, stinging him.
In the camp as the dawn came there was a hum of voices, a rush of people. Strikers, men and women, were running excitedly about. There was a little open place in the midst of the camp and the woman among the communist leaders, the little Jewish woman, her hair hanging down about her eyes, her eyes shining, was trying to harangue the people. Her voice was shrill. It rang through the camp. “Men and women. Men and women. Now. Now.”
Red Oliver heard her voice. He started to creep away from the camp and then stopped. He turned back.
“Now. Now.”
What a fool a man is!
At any rate, no one but Molly Seabright knew of Red’s presence in the camp. “A man talks and talks. He listens to talk. He reads books. He gets himself into a position like this.”
The voice of the
woman in the camp went on. Voice heard round the world. Shot heard round the world.
Bunker Hill. Lexington.
Bunk. Bunker Hill.
“Now. Now.”
Gastonia, North Carolina. Marion, North Carolina Paterson, New Jersey. Remember Ludlow, Colorado.
Is there a George Washington among the communists? No. They are rag-tag people. The rag-tag people of the earth — the workers — who knows anything about them?
“I wonder if I am a coward. I wonder if I am a fool.”
Talk. Shots. On the morning when the soldiers came to Birchfield there was a gray fog lying low down over the bridge — the yellow Southern river down below.
Hill and streams and fields in America. Millions of acres of fat rich land.
The communists had said, “There is enough here to make every one comfortable... all of this talk of no work for men — it’s nonsense... give us a chance... start building... build for the new manhood — build houses — build new cities... use all of this new machinery the brain of man has invented for the benefit of all. Every one can be employed here for a hundred years making rich free living for all... the end of the old greedy individualism now.”
It was true. It was all true.
The communists were cruelly logical. They said, “The way to do it is to begin doing it. Strike down whoever stands in the way.”
A little group of crazy rag-tag people.
The floor of the bridge at Birchfield just emerged out of the fog. It may have been that the communist leaders had a plan. The woman with the disheveled hair and the shining eyes stopped trying to harangue the people and the three leaders began to herd them, men and women, down out of the camp and onto the bridge. Perhaps they thought, “We’ll get over there before the soldiers come.” There was one of the communist leaders, a thin tall young man with a large nose — very pale and that morning without a hat — he was almost bald — who had taken command. He thought, “We’ll get over there. We’ll begin to picket.” It was still too early for the new workers — the ones called “scabs,” who had taken the strikers’ places in the mill, to come to the mill gate. The leader of the communists thought, “We’ll get over there and get into position.”
Like a general. He was trying to be like a general.
“Blood?
“You have to throw blood into the faces of people.”
It was an old saying. A Southerner had once said it in Charleston, South Carolina, and had got a civil war started. “Throw some blood into the faces of the people.” The communist leader had also read history. “Things like this will happen again and again.”
“Hands of workers take hold now.” There were, among the strikers at Birchfield, women with babes in their arms. Already that other woman — the singing woman, the ballad-maker, had been killed at Birchfield. “Suppose now they killed a woman with a child in her arms.”
Had the communist leaders thought that out — a bullet passing through the body of an infant babe and then on through the body of a mother? It would serve. It would educate. It could be used.
The leader may have thought that out. No one knew. He had got the strikers down on the bridge — Red Oliver following at their heels... fascinated by what was going on — when the soldiers appeared. They were marching down the road, Ned Sawyer at their head. The strikers stopped and stood huddled on the bridge and the soldiers came on.
It was light now. There was silence among the strikers. Even the leader had grown silent. Ned Sawyer deployed his men across the road near the entrance to the bridge on the town side. “Halt.”
Was there something wrong with Ned Sawyer’s voice? He was a young man. He was a brother of Louise Sawyer. When, a year or two before, he had gone to the officers’ training camp and then when, later, he became an officer of local militia, he hadn’t counted on this. At the moment he was self-conscious and nervous. He did not want his voice to give way — to tremble. He was afraid it would.
He was growing angry. That would be a help. “These communists. Damn such crazy people.” He thought of something. He also had heard talk of the communists. They were like the anarchists. They threw bombs. It was queer; he half wished it would happen.
He wanted to be angry, to hate. “They are against religion.” In spite of himself he kept thinking of his sister Louise. “Well, she’s all right but she’s a woman. You can’t get at things like this in a woman’s way.” His own notion of communism was vague and cloudy. Workers, dreaming of taking actual power into their own hands. He had been thinking all night on the train, coming to Birchfield. Suppose it were true, as his sister Louise said, that everything in the end rested on the workers and the farmers, that all true values in society rested on them.
“You can’t upset things by violence.”
“Let it come slowly. Let the people be educated to it.”
Ned had said once to his sister... he sometimes argued with her... “Louise,” he said, “if it’s socialism you people are after, come at it slowly. I’d almost be with you if you’d come at it slowly.”
In the road by the bridge that morning Ned’s anger grew. He liked having it grow. He wanted to be angry. Anger steadied him. If he grew angry enough, he would also grow cool. His voice would be steady. It wouldn’t tremble. He had heard, somewhere, had read, that always when a mob gathered... one cool-headed man facing a mob... there was a figure like that in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn — a Southern gentleman... a mob, a man. “I’ll do it myself.” He had halted his men in the road facing the bridge, had thrown them across the road facing the entrance to the bridge. His plan was to drive the communists and the strikers back into their camp, to surround the camp, to hem them in. He gave a command to his men.
“Ready.”
“Load.”
Already he had seen to it that the bayonets were fixed on the soldiers’ guns. That had been done on the way out to the camp. The sheriff and his deputies, who had met him at the railroad station, had drawn back away from the affair at the bridge. The mob on the bridge was pressing forward now. “Don’t come any farther,” he said sharply. He was pleased. His voice was all right. He stepped out in front of his men. “You will have to go back into your camp,” he said sternly. A thought came to him. “I’ll bluff them,” he thought. “The first one who tries to come out of the bridge —
.. “I’ll shoot him like a dog,” he said. He took out his loaded revolver and held it in his hand.
There it was. It was the test. Was it the test for Red Oliver?
As for the communist leaders, one of them, the younger of the two men leaders, would have gone forward to meet the challenge of Ned Sawyer that morning but he was prevented. He had started to step forward, thinking, “I’ll call his bluff. I won’t let him get away with it,” when hands grabbed him, women’s hands clutched at him. One of the women whose hands had gone out — clutching at him was the Molly Seabright, who on the evening before had found Red Oliver in the wood back in the hills. The younger leader of the communists was pulled back again into the mass of the strikers.
There was a moment of silence. Was Ned Sawyer bluffing? —
The one strong man against the multitude. It worked in books and stories. Would it work in life?
Was it a bluff? Now another man stepped forward from among the strikers. It was Red Oliver. He also was angry.
He also was saying to himself, “I won’t let him get away with it.”
*
AND SO — for Red Oliver — the moment. Had he lived for that?
The little stationer of Birchfield, the man with the bad feet had followed the soldiers to the bridge. He had come limping along the road. Red Oliver saw him. He was dancing in the road beyond the soldiers. He was excited, filled with hatred. He danced in the road, throwing his arms above his head. He clenched his fists. “Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot the son-of-a-bitch.” The road sloped down sharply to the bridge. Red Oliver could see the little figure above the heads of the soldiers. It seemed dancing in the air
over their heads.
If Red hadn’t gone back on the workers that time at Langdon... if he hadn’t grown weak-kneed then, at what he thought a vital moment in his life... then later when he was with the young man who had syphilis — the man he had met on the road... his keeping quiet about the seven dollars that time — his lying about it.
He had tried to creep away from the communist camp earlier that morning. He had folded the blanket Molly Seabright had given him and put it neatly on the ground by the tree —
And then —
There had come the excitement in the camp. “It’s none of my business,” he had said to himself. He had tried to go away. He hadn’t succeeded.
He couldn’t.
When the mob of strikers had surged down to the bridge he had followed. There was that queer feeling again— “I am of them and not of them....”
.. as during the struggle at Langdon.
.. a man is such a damn fool...
“... it isn’t my struggle... it isn’t my funeral...
“... it is... it’s the struggle of all men... it has come... it is inevitable.”
.. it is...
“... it isn’t—”
*
AT the bridge, when the younger communist leader had been pulled back in among the strikers, Red Oliver had pushed his way forward. He had worked his way through the crowd. Facing him was another young man. It was Ned Sawyer.
“... What right had he... the son-of-a-bitch.”
It may be a man has to do it — at such a time he has to hate before he can act. There was in Red at the moment also a flame. There was a sudden little burning feeling inside. He saw the absurd little stationer dancing in the road beyond the soldiers. Did he also represent something?
At Langdon there had been the people of his own town, his fellow-townsmen. It might have been thinking of them that made him step forward.
He thought —
Ned Sawyer thought— “They aren’t going to do it,” Ned Sawyer had thought just before Red had stepped forward. “I’ve got them,” he had thought. “I’ve got their nerve. I’ve got it on them. I’ve got their goat.”
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 174