by Bill Albert
Just then Aunt May caught sight of what was going on down the wire. She immediately lifted her voice to a full-throated bellow and began abusing the guard in language ripe enough to take the paint off a fence. Two more guards came rushing over to see what the fuss was about and as they did more shawls were lifted and packages quickly passed into the bullpen. It hadn’t taken Aunt May long to figure out how to work that bullpen wire.
Al’s arrest meant that school was elbowed aside for me, the Grand and the Row, too. Every day I had to go with Aunt May to Kellogg. She might have taken Benny, but he wasn’t there to be taken. He told me his life was growing so fast that it didn’t have time for school or Aunt May’s scoldings. He never returned to the cabin. He picked a good time because Aunt May was far too busy to go after him.
“As a witness, Little Hy. Protection too. Degraded specimens as those men are they won’t do nothing to me if you’re there.”
When she wasn’t visiting Al she was pestering the Army, the special deputies, or was down at Bartlett Sinclair’s office demanding her rights, Al’s rights and just plain demanding. When she wasn’t demanding in person, she was demanding with letters. Vituperative, stinging, irate, intemperate letters that landed hard and one right after the other on the desks of the newspapers, the Governor, Senators and Congressmen, and most importantly, at least according to Aunt May, Al’s Masonic Lodge in Spokane.
“You have to come loaded for bear if you’re fixing to go after a Mason. Those apron boys stick together tighter than a hog’s bristles.”
Aunt May’s daily visits became increasingly grating and unpopular with the bullpen guards and their officers. On visiting days she would vilify the guards, agitate among the other women and get them and the prisoners fired up. On the non-visiting days she’d stand off from the wire and shout lectures at the soldiers about the Law, the Constitution or how they were nothing better than the Mine Owners Association’s hired pug-ugly thugs.
Some of them shouted back, obscene, nasty insults about her size and her sex, and called her Madame de Cow Count. Aunt May rose effortlessly above it all. There was nothing they could say to her that she hadn’t already heard hundreds of times in the mining camps.
Neither the Governor, the mine owners, the Army, Bartlett Sinclair, or the scantling walls of the Andersonville of the Coeur d’Alenes were a match for May Arkwright Hutton. Two weeks after his arrest, Al walked out of the American Bastille a free man.
That didn’t end it for Aunt May. They weren’t going to buy her off that easily.
23
“No more letters, Al. No, sir. Too damn important for letters. I want the whole damn country to know how we’ve been jumped on and bushwhacked here in Shoshone County. The whole damn world! How many miners read the Spokane Review? How many workers read it? How many folks outside of Spokane?”
“Why don’t you just leave it be now, May? Ain’t we had enough bother already?”
“Al Hutton, just because you’ve been stuck in that bullpen, don’t think you can start backsliding on me now you’re out.”
Al sighed and settled back in his chair. He knew then that his two weeks of harsh, inhuman captivity were over good and proper.
“You see, I reckon it’s a story they want, a good old-fashioned story. You know what I mean, Al?”
“Sure, May, but . . . ah, where does that get us to?”
“Get us? Why, it gets us to the telling of the truth, to having the truth read like it needs to be read. A real fine story to wrap it up in, like taking a spoonful of soft honey so’s you don’t get the taste of the castor oil. All the time you were sitting around in that damn bullpen doing nothing I’ve been thinking on it, Al, ‘til my head is full right up to here with that story. You ask Little Hy over there, he knows.”
I couldn’t escape knowing. Every night when we got back from Kellogg she would dictate long passages for me to write down.
At the center of it all was the tale of Jock Hazelton who came to seek his fortune in Idaho, “ . . . dreaming his ambitious dreams of the time when he would have gold enough to make his mother and Helen’s mother comfortable and happy, place them beyond the sordid cares of life, and also when he could take Helen under his protection and with his love shield her from the annoyances of respectable poverty.”
There was a noble Indian princess, Louise Sihone, who has visions, gets baptized, and dies all in the space of a few pages. Also Katherine, a girl as beautiful as a dream and pure as mountain lilies who is cruelly betrayed by David, a wicked Canadian merchant, and finally goes the way of so many deceived and deserted girls, though she only got a page and a half to do it in. Actual people like Ed Boyce, Paul Corcoran, and Sergeant Louis Crawford are there too and even the real-life, at least according to Aunt May, Huckleberry Finn wanders into the story, although it wasn’t clear to me why. His name was Addison Orvando Toncray, “Uncle Tonk,” who Aunt May said she knew in Murray. He was the lovable town drunk, which must have been some distinction in a place as full of drunks as Murray. Bodie Bill was the principal to-hiss-at villain, a man who had sworn eternal vengeance on organized labor and, who, of course, was employed by the Mine Owners Association to do his worst during the troubles in ‘92 and again in ‘99.
Although she hadn’t got so far with her story by the time they released Al, it turns out that Jock Hazelton fights his way bravely through a mountain of trials and tribulations in the mines and bullpens and finally inherits a rich mining property and marries the beautiful, dark-eyed Dolores, the half-breed granddaughter of the Indian princess. They settle down in Denver to do good works for suffering humanity, white and Indian alike.
Aunt May was writing more than some ordinary Dime or some frilly, romancey women’s novel. The story does have its romance, its spoonful, well maybe cupful of honey, but what she really wrote was a two-fisted, no-holds-barred, stand-up battling novel to show the world the inhuman horrors of the capitalistic inquisition in Idaho. And that’s exactly what she called it, The Coeur d’Alenes or A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho.
A couple of years later Big Bill bought me a copy of the book in Denver. He said it was a story to soften the hardest heart, to strike anger into the meekest soul, to uplift the most downtrodden working man. According to him, it was one of the finest pieces of literature he had ever read, and Big Bill Haywood wasn’t a man you’d care to argue with about something like that.
24
Al’s release from the bullpen meant my release from the daily trips to Kellogg with Aunt May. I was free to go back to school, to the Grand and back to Chinese Mary’s crib on the Row where there was a mile of letter writing to catch up on. Within a couple of months, however, the future of all that freedom started to look shaky.
Sam Smith and Rebecca returned from Spokane.
“You wouldn’t believe what those Coleman girls get up to, Hyman. You’ve never seen the like of it. The clothes and the parties. And guess what, Hyman? Well, my father says we are going to move there permanently. To Spokane!”
“A proper community, Hyman, this is what we need, not a wilderness, not a Wallace, a Spokane! For my darling Rebecca, who is soon to be a young lady, Hyman, for her we need a Spokane. Here there are good-for-nothings. Sure, all over there are such good-for-nothings but not so many with insanity who blow up, who steal whole entire trains, who shoot each other, who make for those shvartzer soldiers to come. Is this a place to bring up a daughter? To bring up a young lady? No. Spokane, Hyman, Spokane!”
There was no need for Moses Coleman to come for me now. I could go with Rebecca and her father. They would be glad to deliver me to the family that had agreed to take me in.
“Maltz, a Mr. and Mrs. Jacob, a very nice couple. What else if they’ve agreed to take you in damaged so bad like you are? What but nice? And with charity in their hearts. In trade. Very important man in trade in Spokane, Hyman.”
“They have a daughter,�
� gushed Rebecca, “and I met her; she’s twelve just like you and she’s a good friend of my two cousins, Sarah and Ruth, so we’ll all be good friends, won’t we? They have a big house with a porch, although Mrs. Maltz says we mustn’t say porch but ver-an-da! And inside, Hyman, you wouldn’t believe what they have. In the drawing room there’s wallpaper brought all the way from the East. Can you imagine it? Red damask wallpaper!”
I didn’t have to imagine. Red damask was a Liebermann favorite.
Aunt May was too busy with the Inquisition to think about protecting me from the Smith’s good intentions.
The two people I hadn’t counted on to help me were Bartlett Sinclair and Benny December, but they did. Of course, they didn’t know they were helping me. Things often work out like that.
The first act of my rescue drama began while Sam Smith was at the Grand late one afternoon measuring me for a suit.
“Myself I will make you, Hyman. The finest there is. No store-bought for an important man like Mr. Maltz. With this suit I will make you so yourself you won’t recognize you. A new boy!”
Everyone in the shop had stopped to watch and offer advice. The sisters cautioned a modest suit with knickerbockers; the men who congregated around the stove just grinned and elbowed each other, and Rupert Clutter, who had come out from the back spattered with blood and holding a cleaver, just stood there for once with nothing to say to himself or anyone else.
Sam Smith was down on one knee measuring the inside of my leg when the two special deputies arrived. Big heavy men in identical dark Stetsons.
“What do you mean?” Miss April said with all her bristles out. “Don’t be so preposterous!”
“Got the paper right here, Missus,” said one of the deputies, handing her a folded sheet.
The potbellies had kicked out of their chairs and were standing behind the sisters trying to get a look at the warrant.
“Can’t arrest him,” said Pop Warren, one of the Grand’s regulars. “Look at him will ya, he’s only a boy.”
“We ain’t arrestin him, old man. Mr. Bartlett Sinclair just wants a word is all.”
“Don’t ya boys got enough down there in Kellogg?” called out another of the potbellies.
I saw one of the men disappear hurriedly out the front door.
“To where are you taking him to?” asked Sam Smith, pushing himself in front of me, the tape measure dangling from his hand.
“Now, Mister, just stand aside there, please.”
“Aside I’m not standing until an answer I’m having. This boy is promised already. To Mr. Maltz of Spokane. He is expected.”
“We don’t know nothin about no Maltz,” he said with a sneer that displayed a gold front tooth.
“It’s Mr. Sinclair who’s expectin him. So if ya knows what’s good for ya, Shorty, ya’ll stand aside.”
Sam Smith squared his shoulders and stuck out his chin. A man unafraid of Aunt May was not going to be intimidated by two John B. Stetsons.
“What do you want to make here?” he demanded. “Maybe another Dreyfus?”
“What’s that you’re calling us?”
“That’s right,” said Sam Smith emphatically, “I’m calling you.”
Miss April moved over, took hold of my hand and stood next to Mr. Smith.
“Ain’t no call for any trouble,” said the one without the gold tooth.
“And there will be no trouble,” said Miss Jan sternly, joining her sister in the human wall that was building up between me and the deputies. “Just you leave our store this very instant.”
Pop Warren, Rupert Clutter, and two other men shouted encouragement. While all that support had me choked up, those two deputies had me scared worse. “A word” with Bartlett Sinclair meant the bullpen for sure and although Al never complained about his treatment, I’d heard stories to make me shiver about those Negro soldiers and what they did with their knives if they took a dislike to you and, of course, they didn’t have any reason to like white folks especially since nobody liked them and especially they didn’t have any reason to like the kids who were always shouting all manner of things at them, calling them coons, niggers, hamfoots, Jim Crows, and such like.
“Just plain can’t do her, Missus,” said Gold Tooth. “Our jobs wouldn’t be worth a jar of warm spit if we came back without that there boy.”
“Besides,” said the other. “We got a dozen nigger soldiers waitin on us outside and I’m sure you ladies don’t want them comin in here, do you? Them niggers are wild and sure can do a whole mess of damage if they’ve a mind to.”
At that very moment a chorus of screams and catcalls exploded from out in the street. The deputies rushed to the door and we all followed, pushing up against the windows.
It was some wonderful, spectacular, frightening sight. The Negro soldiers, rifles held tight across their chests, and looking scared bloodless, had been backed up almost right to the door of the Grand by more than two dozen chanting, yelling, hell-fired whores from the Row.
“Jewish Mary! Jewish Mary! Jewish Mary! Jewish Mary!”
Leading the charge was Maggie, eyes on fire, her dark hair flying around her face. Behind her were Black Sally, Ohio Jane, Dolly Red, Deadwood Martha, and all my other customers, not all of them fully dressed but all of them fully riled near to boiling.
“Jewish Mary! Jewish Mary! Jewish Mary!”
Slowly but in unison Sam Smith and the Johnson sisters turned to look at me. I could only give a hopeful shrug.
25
“Jewish Mary?” she roared at me as the train pulled out of the depot in Wallace. “Well, I never seen, never heard such a carry-on in my entire life, Little Hy. You tell me something I want to know right here this minute.”
Aunt May had arrived in the middle of the melee at the Grand. Like Al’s rotary snowplough at full steam she marched through the tangled-up confusion of black soldiers and painted whores and pushed her way into the store.
“If Bartlett Sinclair wants this boy,” she announced, “then he’s going to get May Hutton as well.”
The deputies started up complaining and threatening, but what with all those set faces inside and the whores caterwauling outside I suppose they saw that taking her along was the only way they were going to get me out of Wallace without a full-scale riot. An hour later Aunt May and I were back on that train to Kellogg.
“So that’s what it was!” she trumpeted gleefully. “Damn me! Jewish Mary!”
Big glistening tears ran down her face and caught up in the folds of her chins. Her feather hat flopped sideways. Her massive bust bounced alarmingly and she shook so hard with the laughing that she damn near uprooted the train seat. Everyone in the carriage turned to stare, but she was accustomed to that even when she wasn’t laughing.
“Je-sus! Jewish Mary! Oh, hey there, I’m truly sorry about that, Deputy,” she said as one of her beefy elbows caught Gold Tooth full in the face and sent him scrambling in the aisle for his Stetson.
“I’ll be damned! I sure wouldn’t have chosen it for you, not down there on the Row, but what the hell, you did what you thought best and I can’t fault you, Little Hy.”
That was more than she could say for Benny when I told her. I didn’t tell her everything that he’d done, only enough to explain how I landed up working on the Row, but that was enough to stop her laughing.
“We’ve recently found out that the boy was there, Mrs. Hutton. He can help us identify the guilty men. You can see that, can’t you?”
We were in one of the round army tents with Bartlett Sinclair ramrod straight and trying to smile. Behind him two armed soldiers and the two deputies, Gold Tooth nursing a black eye and a battered Stetson. Outside there were the sounds of the camp getting ready for an evening meal. You could smell meat and coffee. Fires threw up angled shadows on the canvas.
“How’s he going to tell you anything?�
� asked Aunt May, who was standing close behind me. “Scared to death he was and like everyone says, all those boys wore masks. You know that too.”
“You aren’t going to tell me that you approve of what happened, are you, Mrs. Hutton?”
“No, I most certainly am not.”
“Well then, I’m sure as the law-abiding citizen that you are, Mrs. Hutton, you’d want to see those guilty men brought to justice.”
“I want to see those innocent men let out of your damn stinking bullpen, that’s what I want to see. And as a law-abiding citizen I want to see real American law back in this county, not bayonets and stooges paid for by the Mine Owners Association.”
“So,” Bartlett Sinclair said, brushing aside her attack and clapping me on the shoulder. “Here’s how we both get what we want. The only thing Hyman has to do is give us those names and you can take him home. We get the guilty men and set the innocent ones at liberty. What could be fairer than that?”
“And if he can’t give you names?” Aunt May asked. “What then? You going to throw him in the bullpen with the other poor souls, a scrawny twelve-year-old child who can’t even talk?”
The bullpen! I’d be every taunting kid in Wallace and Kellogg and up Canyon Creek. Every kid who threw a stone. Those nightmare Negro soldiers, with yellow eyes and big white teeth and special sharp white-boy-cutting knives.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he replied.
Which was to say it could come to it. He turned to me.
“Hyman?”
I looked up to Aunt May for help. She nodded at me but I couldn’t make out what that meant I was supposed to do. I knew the names he wanted, everyone knew those names, but everyone also knew you didn’t talk to the Army, not if you wanted to hold your head up in Shoshone County you didn’t, although others reckoned it was simply a question of who had you more scared, the Army or the Federation. Right then, for me, it was the Army, no doubt about that at all.