“Why now?” I asked. “Why not ten year ago, or ten year from now?”
“Hit’s the fullness of time,” he said.
I loved that phrase, “the fullness of time.” I shivered to whisper it to myself, for I sensed I was living in it, right then. Nothing afterward would be so important, not like what was happening there on Blackberry Creek. We are put on earth for the fullness of time, we spend our days reaching it, and then we pass on. Some people die right then, with the passing of the fullness, and others breathe on, grieving all their lives that time is being strangled and they are not yet dead. I didn’t fret about this last. I couldn’t imagine it for myself.
In Albion Freeman’s front room, I marvelled at the fullness. The house was packed with miners and their wives come to study the Bible. They sat on the floor, their knees drawn up beneath their chins to save room. Once again I was there by special invitation. I had laid out on the mountainside until dark, then sprinted through the billowing smoke of the coke ovens, a perfect cover blown over that part of the camp by a wind from the head of the holler. I stretched out in the Freeman’s yard before entering the house and scanned the row for guards. None appeared, and I slipped up the back steps into the kitchen. Carrie was taking cookies out of the oven. She smiled at me.
“You’ll be happy tonight,” she said. “Albion has done so well.”
I talked to them about what to expect in case of a strike. They listened quietly, their faces stretched tight to show no fear. After about ten minutes there came a vigorous thumping from beneath the house.
“Hit’s Roscoe Blackburn keeping watch,” Albion whispered to me. He led us in singing “Blessed Assurance.” I wriggled back into a shadowy corner. When the hymn was done, Roscoe thumped once. We commenced talking about the union again. Albion closed the meeting with a prayer.
I stayed until everyone had left, figuring that the gun thugs would be occupied with seeing folks home. I shook Albion’s hand.
“You’re doing good work,” I said.
“Am I?” he answered. “I aint sure. The Bible says do everything for love, and to love your enemies. I aint sure I’m doing a good job of loving the coal operators.”
“Lord,” I said, “Jesus Christ hisself is likely having trouble with that.”
He shook his head. “He ate with the sinners and tax collectors.”
“Well, ifn you can git Lytton Davidson to let you eat with him, maybe you’ll figure out how to love him. Until then, it’s his doing.”
When I went to the kitchen Carrie was washing dishes. She turned around and our eyes met. I wanted her to tell me to be careful like she had before. Then I heard steps and spun around. Albion had followed me into the room. I felt my face flush red with embarrassment.
“I better go,” I stammered.
Albion smiled.
“Douse the light, Carrie,” he said. “He better not go out until we watch for Baldwins.”
She followed me out on the back stoop.
“You be careful,” she said.
No one bothered me since the day I was roughed up at Davidson. I worked slowly and quietly throughout the winter, and by April I judged that the majority of miners at Jenkinjones, Felco, and Winco had been organized. I slept during the daytime, usually at Ruby Day’s or in various rooms in her daddy’s cathouse. At night I visited taverns, churches, and even an occasional home. The Baldwin-Felts guards came to Annadel to do business, but I was always accompanied by Isom or one of his policemen.
Many a night I stayed up late with C.J., Isom and Doc to argue strategy. We knew the company would evict striking miners from their houses. The District leaders in Charleston were already getting in a store of tents for the families to live in, and collecting food. We talked about where to set up the tents. I said the Jenkinjones miners could be relocated at the ball field in Annadel, Felco miners could live at the Justice farm, Winco could go to Cesco Thompson’s land on Lloyd’s Fork. Davidson presented a problem, for American Coal and the railroad controlled every scrap of land all the way into Justice.
“Hell, Davidson wont come out no way,” said Doc. “Why worry over where to set them?”
“They got to come out,” I said. “Either that or we shut them down. We cant win no strike if Davidson keeps on working.”
“Well,” said C.J., “ifn we do so well that Davidson is shut down, we can just take over Davidson land. Marcum land, I should say.”
“I dont care for it,” Isom complained. “Not nary a bit of it. Look here, what right they got to put folks outen their houses?”
“They claim they can do anything they want with their property,” I said.
“But dont we claim hit’s our land?” C.J. said. “Isom’s right. We shouldnt just let them git away with it.”
“How we supposed to stop them?”
“With guns!” C.J. answered. “Aint we stockpiling guns?”
“What do you think them long things are they carry? They aint hoes.” I looked around the table. “Anybody got any good ideas, I’ll listen. But they aint no way in hell we can stop evictions in a camp like Felco.”
“Not Felco or Winco,” Isom said. “But we can by God stop them in Jenkinjones.”
“They got to change trains in Annadel to git to Jenkinjones,” C.J. said. “I’m the mayor of this here town and Isom is the law. We got ever right to stop them.”
“Damn straight,” Isom said. They looked at one another appreciatively.
“I’m uneasy,” I said.
“Ifn a feller comes through my town on his way to commit a crime, aint I got a right and a duty to stop him?” Isom demanded. “And aint it a crime to set a man and his family out in the road just because he joins a union?”
“I aint the one you need to convince. Tell it to the Baldwins.”
“We got to fight em sometime,” Doc said. “C.J. and Isom are right. This here town is ours. We start giving ground here we done whupped before we started.”
“All right, all right. Ifn they try to go through Annadel, we stop em. But how? We better plan this thing out.”
“I’ll just arrest them,” Isom said. He grinned at C.J. “Me and the mayor here, we run a clean town.”
C.J. grinned back.
I was glad to see them getting along again. It was easier for them to like one another because both of them were so happy. For C.J. the time had come at last to avenge his papaw’s murder and take back his land. If he was worried about how the Davidson miners would take to him setting up a farm in the middle of their coal camp, he didn’t show it. There was room for everyone, he kept insisting.
Isom thought it was a lark. He couldn’t wait to match wits with the Baldwin-Felts gunmen. Every time I saw him, he had a new idea about how to defend Jenkinjones.
I listened to them and went on with my organizing. The foreign miners were the last ones I reached. I had dreaded working with them because I never knew any of them well when I was growing up. But it proved surprisingly easy. Many spoke English, and those who didn’t only had to hear the word “syndicato” and they perked right up. Many of them had been radicals back home or had at least heard a lot of radical talk. They joined up like flies after a mule’s rump.
I couldn’t believe the Baldwins hadn’t got wind of it.
“Maybe they’re thinking it done gone too far to stop,” Doc Booker suggested. “So they figure they ride out a strike, fire everybody, and start over with new workers that dont know what’s going on.”
Antoine Jones and I were watching Fatty Arbuckle at the Roxie one night when Isom slipped into a seat beside us.
“Git out of this goddamn theater,” he hissed. “Hit’s so dark in here somebody could shoot you and nobody ever see who done it.”
“Oh hell, Antoine’s with me.”
“The gun thugs shot up Winco.”
“What?”
“Let’s git out of here so we can talk.”
We slipped out the fire exit into the alley. Isom explained, “You know them five h
ouses that set on the bend there toward the tipple?”
“Right. Where Junebug Slater lives.”
“Where he lived. Junebug’s dead. And his oldest boy Herman, ten year old. And three others, including Vencil Ray’s wife.” Isom’s eyes glittered in the dark. “Just a little warning, aint it?”
I felt sick to my stomach. It was one of the first places I organized. I had sat at Junebug Slater’s kitchen table at two in the morning, no lamp lit and the moonlight painting everything silver, and gave six men the pledge.
Isom took me to the Alhambra and I got roaring drunk.
“You got to pull em out,” he said.
“Shit. Oh shit. Why ever did I come back?”
“The dice is done rolled. They’ll just be picking us off one by one from here on out. Pull em out.”
“I got to talk with the District.”
“Hell with the District. Send them a telegram. Tell em you’re pulling out every motherfucker on this creek.”
For a moment I hated him the way C.J. hated him, because it was so easy for him. He threw my arm around his shoulders and helped me to the telegraph office.
“Andy!” he yelled at the clerk. “Hit’s strike time!”
I leaned on the counter, one hand splayed across my forehead.
“Miners murdered stop,” I mumbled. “All over stop going out stop.” I stood straight, stumbled toward the door, turned at an afterthought. “Send tents send food!” I yelled. “Stop!”
Isom hugged me. “God, I love you,” he said.
Next morning my head throbbed from a hangover. I trudged up the stairs to Doc’s office. Carrie was at the medicine cabinet.
“You got any aspirin?”
She handed me two and I tossed them down.
“Tell Albion tonight. Tell him to pull them out first thing tomorry morning.”
She looked out the window. “Will Pond Creek come out too?”
“We got a feller who’s been signing up Pond Creek miners. I reckon they’ll come out before too long. You thinking about your brother?”
She nodded her head and started to cry. My bad leg ached and I shifted my weight.
“You got anything in your house that you want to keep, you better pack it up to take with you,” I said. “The gun thugs will break up everything.”
“He’ll be on the other side,” she said. “Dont kin mean nothing no more?”
“I wouldnt know,” I said.
Next morning Carrie told me Albion Freeman went to the mine early and when the others arrived, he stood at the drift mouth and poured the water out of his water bottle. Everyone else did the same and no one went in. I heard a similar story from Winco. By afternoon the evictions began. Scores of company guards fanned out through the two coal camps. They banged on the doors of houses with rifle butts, ordered everyone out, took special care to keep their guns trained on the children so their parents wouldn’t fight back. They tossed furniture into the road. People salvaged what they could carry away. A woman named Betty Woolridge, nine months pregnant, laid down on a mattress and gave birth beside the road while her neighbor’s dishes were tossed out and smashed beside her.
They arrived at Ermel’s farm that night. The tents came two days later. In the meantime they slept on the ground and cooked over open fires. Ermel gave them food from his store. I promised him the union would pay him back.
When the tents went up with their peaks and circular towers, Ermel’s cornfield looked like some Arab city you read of in books, made of canvas instead of stone.
The strike spread. Over 12,000 people were living in the tent colonies. Many Kentucky miners signed up at an organizing meeting in Justice. By the end of the week Pond Creek was shut down, and a tent city grew up between Chieftan and Vulcan. Even Davidson miners signed up, so that Number Five closed down at once and I judged it would be only a few months before we would shut down the rest. Our demands were simple—freedom of speech, no Baldwin guards, union checkweighmen to guarantee a man got credit for the coal he mined, and recognition of the union. There was no mention of the land, but the union constitution called for the workers to receive the “full social value of their product,” and C.J. seemed content that everything else would follow.
On May 10, 1920, I called out the miners at Jenkinjones. The next day, Isom came tearing up the stairs to my hotel room.
“They’re here! Twelve of the bastards! And Jesus Christ, they got two of the big boys with them!” He pulled me to the window and pointed outside where a group of men with rifles slung over their shoulders strolled around the station platform beside the depot. “There by the baggage rack!”
Two men dressed in expensive-looking pinstripe suits and shiny shoes stood and smoked cigars.
“Hit’s the brothers of the man that owns Baldwin-Felts. God, can you believe it? They just come in with those other thugs on the main Blackberry train up from Bluefield.”
C.J. entered the room.
“I heard the local’s whistle,” he said. “It will be here any time.”
Isom ran to the door, then back to the window.
“I cant arrest nobody. The word’s gone out but the boys aint here yet. We cant arrest no twelve gun thugs without a lot of men.”
“You got the warrants?” I asked.
“Daddy brung em down from Justice day before yesterday.”
Outside the Jenkinjones local pulled in and the gun thugs, along with the two gentlemen in pinstripes, boarded the train.
“They’re either goddamn arrogant and complacent, or they’re scairt half to death,” I said softly.
“They’re arrogant,” C.J. said. “They dont think nobody would dare touch em. Why else would old man Felts send his brothers in here?”
“Shall we try to foller them up to Jenkinjones, stop the evictions?” Isom asked.
“No,” I said. “Hit’s too late for that. But we’ll be waiting when they come back.”
Two score of miners arrived from Ermel’s with their Winchester rifles. Isom sent them to the hotel windows overlooking the depot and into the hardware store that fronted the tracks. Antoine Jones had charge of the men in the hardware store. C.J., Ermel, Albion Freeman, Doc, Isom and I gathered in the hotel lobby. We decided that Doc and Ermel would remain in charge of the hotel.
“Where’s your gun, preacher?” Isom asked.
“I aint toting one.”
Isom looked at me and raised his eyebrows, said, “That’s all right. I got this here under control.”
We hung around the lobby and tried to make small talk about the new baseball season. Ermel, usually so careful of the appearance of his hotel, tapped his cigarette ashes onto the green patterned carpet. At 4:30 a miner stuck his head in the door. “Jenkinjones local’s coming back down.”
We tried to walk slowly out to the platform. We waited with our hands in our pockets, not looking at one another.
Talcott stepped up and tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m going to help you boys.”
“Go on back to the hotel.”
“Shit!” he said, and disappeared.
Isom paced the platform. It was strange to see him so agitated. I put my arm around him.
“Just arrest them,” I said.
“Right. Then git drunk as hell.”
C.J. kept glancing at his watch. The train whistle blew around the bend. Isom shook me by the shoulders.
“You got to git back. I dont want you messed up in this.”
“Aw, I thought this here was settled.”
“I just been thinking. They see you up this close, they might be tempted to shoot you. Go on! Git!”
He shoved me back roughly and I retreated to the doorway of the hardware store. I saw Talcott standing behind the depot. His hand rested on the brown handle of a pistol at his belt. I motioned to him to join me but he just grinned and waved back. Antoine handed me a Winchester.
“If you’re going to stand in that doorway, hold this back behind you,” he said. “Aint no sense to alarm em.”
>
I waved at Talcott again. When he still ignored me, I sprinted to him just before the train pulled in.
“I didnt want you here,” I said.
“You dont tell me what to do. This here is my fight as much as yourn.”
The local pulled in and stopped, its engine grumbling to itself. The doors of the red passenger car flew open. The gunmen came down jauntily, with the pleased and impatient air of men who have done a job and are anxious to be home. They sauntered along the platform to wait for the Bluefield train.
Isom waited until the local pulled out before he approached. C.J. and Albion flanked him on either side. Isom set his hand to his badge to see if it was in place. Then he walked up to the two men in pinstripes.
“You gentlemen have been evicting people from their homes in Jenkinjones,” said Isom.
They looked him up and down. Both had smooth, broad faces and thick fleshy lips. The taller one smiled at Isom while the other studied his brother’s face expectantly.
“We’ve been removing trespassers from the property of the American Coal Company, Sheriff,” said the tall one.
“I aint a sheriff,” Isom said. “I’m chief of police. And you’re under arrest.”
They showed no signs of surprise.
“I got a warrant from the county seat,” Isom continued.
“What’s the charge?”
“Assault. And illegal possession of weapons. You aint got a permit for them guns.”
“Since when do we need one?”
“Since last week,” C.J. said. “City council passed an ordinance last week.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m the mayor of this here town.”
“Mr. Marcum, is that right? Well, Mr. Marcum, Mr. Justice, I’m afraid I’ve got some unpleasant news for you. It’s really you who are under arrest. We’re taking you both to Bluefield with us.”
He reached inside his coat and brought out a piece of paper. I heard a clicking sound beside my ear. I turned my head. Talcott held his pistol cocked. Our eyes met.
“You cant do that,” C.J. was protesting. “You got no right. This here aint no kind of warrant.”
Storming Heaven Page 19