Honeyville

  Max arrived in town with a reporter friend named Frank Bohn, and a loud voice, and a suitcase full of pens and papers, and a lot of well-worded outrage. The rail track ran along one edge of the tent colony, or what was left of it, and Max Eastman’s train passed by the carnage at Ludlow before it drew into town. The campsite was still smoking, and the dugouts beneath many of the tents were still being excavated. He told Inez afterwards that the smell of burning flesh had made his stomach heave, and I dare say it did. He looked as white as a ghost that first morning, the first I set eyes on him. He was lugging his New York luggage up North Commercial Street in search of a hotel, just as twenty or more strikers were marching by, and he seemed to cower at the sight of them. I did too, actually. Though such was their rage and grief, I am certain we were invisible to them.

  Strikers were marching in haphazard units up and down throughout the town that day, shouting and firing their guns in the air. They dominated the streets and I dare say Max Eastman and his chum were terrified. I know I was. I hadn’t wanted to come out, but none of the other girls was willing, and one of us had to.

  Until that point, I had stayed aloof from the politics – taken great care about it, too – and I intended to return to being aloof as soon as possible. But the burning of those women and children was beyond politics. The tent colony had been set aflame, and now several thousand people were without any place to go. Nobody could live alongside that kind of suffering and remain unmoved – and still consider themselves human.

  Phoebe wasn’t human. But there were plenty of us at Plum Street who were. We had made a collection of food and blankets and dollar bills, and a couple of us were transporting them to the Union offices, only because (in spite of everything, it didn’t matter who started shooting at whom first, or even why) the Union had systems in place to get help to the newly homeless.

  It was Jasmine and me who took Phoebe’s auto the short drive from Plum Street to the Union offices on North Commercial. Jasmine didn’t want to come into the building, and nor would Carlos, Phoebe’s man-of-all-work, so I hauled our booty to the front desk on my own.

  In Cody’s place at the counter that morning there stood no one at all. I felt a pang of sorrow for his missing figure and wondered, briefly, what and whose misdeeds had led to the bullet in his head – before the poor boy had even finished growing. The office was deserted. I wasn’t sure what to do. I could leave the blankets and the food on the front desk, where there was already a large pile of donations, but I hesitated to do the same with our dollars. So I stood for a moment, dithering.

  A shadow crossed the door behind me. I turned to see Lawrence looming.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  It sounded hostile. ‘Same reason anyone else is.’ I indicated the mountain of donations. ‘The girls got a collection of stuff together …’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, his voice relaxing. ‘I thought maybe Inez … Well, thank you. Leave it on the counter there, will you? I’ll get one of the boys to sort through it.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I was going to do, but what about the cash? I didn’t want to leave a bunch of loose dollars without knowing someone has them safe.’

  ‘Cash? How much have you got there?’ He held out a hand.

  ‘Just more than three hundred bucks,’ I replied, passing it over. ‘Not a single cent from Phoebe …’

  ‘Hm. What do you know?’ He gave me a thin smile. ‘Well, thank you, Dora,’ he said, moving past me to lift the counter hatch. ‘Thank you kindly. Much appreciated.’ He stopped. ‘Inez all right then?’ he asked. ‘She heard about young Cody?’

  ‘She heard about him.’

  ‘Bad news. She took it all right, did she?’

  ‘She seemed to,’ I said. ‘It all came in together – what happened up at Ludlow yesterday, and then Cody just the day or so before … God knows.’ I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to say to him, because when she told us yesterday, it was almost as if she had been reporting on the weather.

  ‘I went to Cody’s hardware store this afternoon,’ she’d informed us. ‘Because I knew he could tell me what was going on up at Ludlow. But he wasn’t there. Mr Paulin said he got killed. Shot dead right there in the store yesterday afternoon. Can you believe it? Little Cody … I don’t know, Dora. Everyone just keeps dying.’ And she’d sighed. ‘It’s getting so horrid, isn’t it? I’m not sure I can stand it much longer.’

  After that, we’d talked about the shooting at Ludlow. We’d argued about which side had fired what shot first, and whether it even mattered … And we didn’t mention Cody again.

  Lawrence watched me, as if he might learn some added secret from my face. But I had no secrets and, after a moment, he seemed to accept the fact. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank the girls, will you? For their generosity. And you tell Inez to take care.’

  He disappeared into the depths of the office and I turned back to the street. I must have taken longer inside than I’d realized. Either that, or Jasmine and the driver had been too afraid to wait for more than a second. I was searching the street for a sight of the car, when I spotted Inez and Xavier striding purposefully towards me, waving.

  There weren’t many on the streets – that is, not many who weren’t in from Ludlow, here to muster for the fight. Amid the angry male faces, hobnail boots and rugged working clothes, my two dainty friends stood out absurdly. As if to illustrate the point, there came a volley of gunshots from behind them as they drew up beside me.

  ‘What in hell are you doing out here?’ I asked over the noise. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘There you are, Dora!’ Inez shouted, ignoring my question. ‘Isn’t it awful?Gosh, I was so hoping to bump into you. I knew you’d be out!’

  ‘I only came to drop off some stuff from the girls. But I don’t want to be here. I want to get home. What are you two doing, roaming the streets? You’ll get yourselves killed.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Inez, ignoring my question again, ‘we can’t get back up to Main Street from here.’ She pointed in the direction I would have headed. ‘It’s too dangerous, darling. Men everywhere. Do you want to come with us?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Not at all. And you should go home, Inez. I don’t like it out here one bit.’

  ‘None of us likes it,’ said Inez, with shining eyes. ‘Xavier’s been trying to drag me back home this past half-hour. But this is our city, Dora! Why should we hide away?’

  ‘Because we don’t want to get killed?’ suggested Xavier. I glanced at him. Beneath the laconic manner he was livid. He couldn’t abandon her, and yet he knew as well as I did what madness it was to be roaming the streets. Though the rabble ignored us now, who knew for how long, or when it might turn? The air was nil with violence and hatred. Here and there came the sound of objects thrown, raised voices, and then – from somewhere or nowhere – gunshots; there were men brazenly carrying guns. Nobody was stopping them. There was nobody to stop them. General Chase and his men – where were they now?

  ‘We should go home,’ I said again.

  ‘I keep telling her,’ Xavier said. ‘I can’t just leave her here, can I?’

  I glanced at Inez, but her attention had already skittered on down the street. She was gazing through a gap in the crowd, at a handsome man I would soon discover was Max Eastman. Tall and lean – and terrified, as I have mentioned; dressed in linen suit and cravat, he and his suitcase looked even more out of place than we did.

  ‘Oh my giddy aunt!’ gasped Inez. ‘Oh the blessed saints … You know who that is, don’t you, Xavie darling?’ Her eyes were round as saucers and her voice came out in a gust of wonder.

  He turned to look.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Yes you do! He wrote the article, Xavier! The one about the … For heck’s sake, the editor of The Masses! That’s who has come to Trinidad to write about our troubles! Max Eastman!
And if Max Eastman is here, I should think the whole world will be here next. I should think we are finally going to get the attention we deserve … He looks rather lost, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not really,’ Xavier said.

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  There came a roar from the direction of Main Street – what sounded like the battle cry of at least thirty miners. It was followed by the smashing of glass and then another volley of shots – from not one but several rifles. Max Eastman and his companion stopped still, looked about them: a couple of New York intellectuals in linen suits scared out of their wits, in our frontier town. If I hadn’t been so afraid myself, I might have laughed at the sight of them.

  ‘I’m going to help him,’ Inez said. ‘Them,’ she corrected herself. And in a flash she was gone, marching towards them in her pantaloon skirt and red felt hat. From where I stood, thirty yards or so behind her, I could see Max Eastman spotting her approach, and the delightful transformation that came over his stance, his face – his everything – as she drew up before him.

  She held onto her hat and tipped her head. He lifted his own hat and half bowed and smiled; and put a hand on a hip, and nodded encouragingly, as she pointed this way and pointed that – and in a moment, with the odd, stray, distant bullet still firing somewhere on Main Street, they were deep in conversation.

  ‘Good God!’ I said to Xavier, laughing.

  ‘Can you believe it? In the middle of this, they are flirting! … She is irrepressible,’ he said. His voice was full of affection. We stood quietly, looking on in wonder, until there came yet another gunshot from the direction of Main Street, perhaps slightly closer than the last, and Xavier said, ‘Can we leave her alone out here? I don’t think we can.’

  ‘If she won’t come back with us, then I think we must,’ I said. ‘She’s an adult. If she wants to get caught in the fight, that’s her choice. But I’m heading home. And I think you should too … Inez can look after herself.’

  As I said it, and tried to believe it, Inez’s voice rang out, shouting our names and beckoning us over. When we didn’t move immediately, she tugged at Max Eastman’s linen sleeve and brought him over to meet us.

  ‘Dora, Xavier,’ she babbled, ‘I told you it was him and it is! This is the genius, Max Eastman. And this is … This is Frank …’

  ‘Frank Bohn …’ Frank gave a half-bow as he introduced himself.

  ‘He’s another writer. And Max says there’s a whole bunch of reporters and writers making their way here. What do you say about that? They’re looking for a hotel. But The Masses being The Masses,’ she said, rolling her beautiful eyes, ‘sadly they don’t have much cash. I suggested the Toltec but I think it’s pretty much packed out with Union men. The Corinado is better, for a budget. Don’t you think so? Not that I have the faintest idea really,’ she added. And blushed.

  26

  That evening, Phoebe closed the Plum Street Parlour House for the first time since she’d opened it fifteen years before. She gathered us all in the ballroom at about three in the afternoon to announce her decision. Jake Trueman, our house musician, had lost two of his brothers at Ludlow (company men, both) and therefore wasn’t working tonight, she explained. Added to which the small fat general, in a forlorn attempt to restore order, had imposed a curfew on the town. The saloons had been ordered closed and the strikers had taken possession of City Hall. Nobody in their right mind would be coming into Snatchville tonight.

  ‘Besides,’ Phoebe said primly, ‘it’s not a night for dancing. I don’t believe it would be appreciated.’

  She was right, of course.

  Even so, the curfew was a joke. After the Ludlow burning, General Chase lost what control he’d ever had in Trinidad. He might have ordered saloon closures until the geese flew south again. The saloons stayed open anyway.

  That was the first night we all gathered at the Toltec. Inez was at the heart of it all, with Max Eastman beside her, laughing elegantly at all her sweet jokes. But it was Max Eastman who was the star of the show, as ever. And so, by association, was Inez, as she basked in his approval. Aside from Max and Inez there was Frank Bohn, the travelling companion, an activist and poet and a leading light, I learned, among the thinkers of Greenwich Village. Beside him there was Xavier and there was me, two fish out of water, gazing in. There were two lady reporters, one from a paper in New York. (I forget her name now. She managed to be simultaneously drab and dreadfully brash. I didn’t take to her much.) And there was another lady named Gertrude Singer, much more lively, from a publication in Denver. There was a young Jack Reed, charming, funny – preaching revolution (dead now, of course, his famous bones buried in the Kremlin). The writer Upton Sinclair was there too, a shrivelled, sanctimonious little figure in the corner. And there were several others.

  The group grew larger as the week wore on, but that first evening at the Toltec Saloon, with the shutters pulled, and only the back room open for business, there were no more than ten of us. It was the night Inez read her poem.

  I caught Xavier’s eye as she and Max were gazing at one another, deep in earnest discussion. The room was shrill with the noise of our visitors, each one straining louder to express their horror at the tragedy over at Ludlow – what it meant for America, and for the working man, and for the future of capitalism, and for revolution and for a new world … Inez had a hand on Max’s forearm, and they were leaning towards one another as if, any moment, they might kiss. I muttered to Xavier:

  ‘I think her heart is mended, don’t you?’

  He laughed. ‘Hers is,’ he said quietly, beneath the hubbub. ‘How about yours?’

  ‘Mine?’ I laughed. Xavier had a habit of saying things that startled me. ‘Honestly, I’m not certain there’s anything much of it left to mend. How about yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah!’ he smiled. ‘Mine brings me nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ I wondered if I dared to ask something further, but he beat me to it.

  ‘Was William Paxton a friend of yours, Dora?’ he asked. But he didn’t wait for me to reply. ‘Perhaps you’re not allowed to say. Even though I wouldn’t tell it to a soul … Only I saw your expression when Inez told me he had been killed. You’ve been kind of subdued ever since.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I shook my head. ‘I didn’t know him.’

  ‘Right you are,’ he nodded. ‘I hope I didn’t offend you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  We looked away for a moment or two, pretending to attend to the opinions filling the air around us, and then we both apologized at once. We glanced back at one another and laughed.

  ‘Well, the truth of it is yes, I did know him,’ I whispered. ‘I was very fond him. But you mustn’t, you really mustn’t …’

  ‘Gosh, no, Dora, of course not. Although, I can’t honestly imagine who I’d tell it to, in any case. It may have escaped your notice, but I don’t talk to many folk in this town. Or maybe they don’t talk to me. Anyway, you and Inez are really my only friends. At least …’ He looked bashful. ‘If that’s not impertinent. May I count on you as a friend?’

  ‘I should certainly say so!’ I said. And I dare say it was a combination of everything – William dying, and then the shock of that poor lad, Cody, and then the tragedy that had taken place at Ludlow, and the fury on our streets, and the anarchy, and the cruelty and injustice of it all; and the sense that nothing, anywhere, was safe … And then all these smart, clever people descending on Trinidad, telling each other, in their shrill, opinionated voices that this small town in the middle of the prairie – our small town in the middle of our prairie – was the shame of Colorado, of America, of the civilized world … All of this played its part. But I had to leave the table, just for a moment. Because when Xavier said he counted me as a friend, it seemed that his words were the kindest ever spoken. And I did not want to weep, not in front of that crowd.

  When I returned, Inez was telling everyone about her ‘spying kit’, which had finally been delivered
to the cottage last week. ‘Only look at this!’ she was saying, and from the secret pocket of her pantaloon skirt, she produced a tiny, kid-leather purse. It had a silver catch, which opened onto a silk-lined pouch with space enough for a looking glass and rouge pot inside; and hidden beneath the silk-lined pouch she revealed another tiny catch.

  ‘Look, look, look at this!’ she cried. ‘Only please,you must all look at this! You need this sort of thing, if you’re a single girl in Trinidad. Isn’t that right, Dora?’

  I nodded, waiting to see what sort of thing it was we single girls might need. Tucked neatly behind the mirror, she revealed a pistol small enough to fit into the palm of a lady’s hand. Inez pulled it out by its mother-of-pearl handle, and we gasped. Or most of us did. It was, after all, the smallest, prettiest, most well-disguised little gun any of us had ever laid eyes upon.

  ‘For heck’s sake, Inez,’ said her brother. ‘We have enough guns in this town already. Put that thing away!’

  ‘Oh Xavier, don’t be so dull.’

  ‘Put it away!’ he snapped.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I will …Only please do look! I haven’t finished … I’ll just bet you all think this is a tiny pot of rouge, don’t you?’ Beaming like a child, she held it up to the table.

  ‘Surely not!’ Max laughed. ‘I’m sure a girl like you wouldn’t dream of wearing any such thing! Rather, I would have said it was a tin of peppermint sweets.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘It isn’t either of those things. It isn’t even meant to be peppermint sweets anyway. But never mind. If you hadn’t already seen my little gun, you would never have imagined, would you, that it contained …’ She opened the little tin, and there were the little gun’s little bullets.

  And standing right behind her, his face expressionless, was Lawrence O’Neill.

  He nodded at me. Didn’t look at Xavier. Ignored Inez completely. He addressed himself to Max Eastman. ‘Excuse me, sir, for butting in,’ he said. ‘I heard you were in town … You too, Mr Reed.’ He nodded at Jack Reed, whose work was often published in The Masses. Lawrence looked quite shy – an expression I’d never seen in him before. He explained his connection to the Union. ‘I wasn’t in the office when you dropped by. I was sorry to miss you. But I understood you made it out to Ludlow …’