All Men Fear Me

by Donis Casey

  Alafair began to untie her apron. “I’m going with you over to Mary’s.”

  “No, Ma, I’ll talk to her myself.” Martha was firm. “She and I can make our plans. If she wants to talk to you about it later I’m sure she’ll be over directly.”

  Alafair gave in with bad grace, sorry that she couldn’t command her grown daughters like she used to. Alafair didn’t have Martha’s faith in the goodwill of the other women in the Red Cross chapter. She watched Martha pedal off on her bicycle toward Mary’s house, wondering how she was going to comfort both of them when their plans failed miserably.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “[These days] you can’t even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage.”

  —Max Eastman, July 1917

  Before his cousin Shaw married Alafair, Scott had only a passing acquaintance with the Gunn family. Alafair and her siblings were quite a bit younger than Scott and his sister, so he only remembered Rob as one of the ragtag boys who ran around town in packs. Cheeky, that was the only impression Scott had of the boy. He didn’t know the man at all. Rob had the same sharp “I know you” expression in his dark eyes as did his sister, but that didn’t mean the siblings held to the same values.

  He rode out to his cousin’s farm, where Alafair met him at the front door. “What brings you by, Scott?”

  Her greeting was so pleasant that he hated to tell her. “Morning, Alafair. Is your brother around? I need a word with him.”

  The smile fell off her face. “What about?”

  “I just got a visit from the county sheriff. Seems word has gotten around that there is a Wobblie in the area. I just thought I’d come out and put a bug in Rob’s ear.”

  “Oh, mercy! Martha was by here this morning and told me something of the like.” She pushed the screen door open. “Well, I guess you’d better come in, then.” She led him into the parlor and seated him in a corner armchair with a cup of coffee and a piece of molasses cake while Sophronia ran to the fields to fetch Rob. Scott spent fifteen minutes eating cake and playing cat’s cradle with Grace before Rob came in. Scott could tell by his expression that Alafair had already filled him in.

  Rob took his time hanging up his hat, pulling off his gauntlets, and wiping his sweaty face with a bandana before he sat down across from Scott. Aside from his greeting, he said nothing until Scott had told him everything Sheriff Barger had said.

  Rob leaned forward. “Scott, I’ve hardly left the property these past few days. I don’t know anybody around here but my kin. Why on earth would I have any interest in causing trouble for Alafair? There’re plenty of other places I can go to get myself arrested.”

  “Rob, for Alafair’s sake the family has tried to keep it a close secret what it is you do for a living. But there are just too many of us around here for it to be a secret for long. And I’m telling you that there are folks all over this county who once they hear you work for the I.W.W. will be very willing to believe that you murdered Win Avey because he’s a Council of Defense representative. Or maybe just because he was a brickworker and you want to cause a work slowdown. If there is one thing people know about the Wobblies it is their practice of strikes and slowdowns.”

  Rob sank back his chair, torn between outrage and an all-too-familiar feeling of déjà-vu. “Well, I ain’t been doing any murdering and anybody who thinks so is an idiot,” he said. The words came out sharper than he intended and grimaced. “I’m sorry. But it’s got so that if you’re union, you better get used to being accused of every nefarious act within a hundred miles of you. I know you feel like you have to ask. So I swear to you, Scott, on my mother’s head, that I don’t have anything to do with whatever has been going on out at that brick plant.”

  “I doubt you did. Still, on top of everything else, the Muskogee County sheriff has been informed that there is a W.C.U. plot in the state to raise an army and march to Washington to take over the government. And he’s also been told that an I.W.W. agitator has been sent here with the express purpose of egging them on. Your name was mentioned.”

  Rob’s heart fell with a thud. Those tenant farmers were doomed. Still, he brazened it out. No use to blow the game before he had a chance to try and help the poor downtrodden critters. “That’s damn unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “Damn impossible,” Scott agreed. “That don’t mean a bunch of blockheads who don’t have the least idea how far it is to Washington, or what they’d run into even if they did get there, aren’t aiming to try. And whether there’s some sort of plot going on or not, I’ve been told that if I get wind of any of these said agitators, especially the I.W.W. agent, I should clap him in irons and send him to the marshal’s office in Muskogee.”

  “So do you intend to clap me in irons?”

  “Are you advocating the overthrow of the government?”

  Rob laughed. “No. Wouldn’t mind to see some changes, though.”

  “What were you up to before you came out to visit with Alafair?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Scott nodded. Rob’s unwillingness to answer told him what he wanted to know. “You weren’t in Arizona by any chance, were you? Maybe Bisbee?”

  “So word’s finally gotten around about what happened in Bisbee, has it? That was an illegal action, Scott, them deporting the miners without due course of law before they were even on strike.”

  “You think that matters? It might be a wise thing if you was to move on at your earliest opportunity. I’d hate to have to try and get between you and a lynch mob.”

  Rob was not surprised at the warning. He was grateful that Scott didn’t throw him in jail on general principle. That was what usually happened. He’d come into some town and start organizing and end up in jail. Or get picked up in the middle of the night, hauled out into the country and left stranded by the side of the road. Or beaten up. This time, he thought about that delicious chicken-fried steak, the little children vying to sit on his lap, the clean, cool, fresh sheets on his bed, and felt very sorry to have to go. The expression of outrage faded from his face. “I’m inclined to agree with you, Scott.”

  Scott looked surprised that he had caved in so easily. “Well, good, then.”

  “I’d like to go with the family to the Liberty Sing before I light out, though. Alafair asked me to.”

  “I don’t know about that, Rob. Not now that Clover knows your name. I don’t want trouble if I can avoid it.”

  “I’ll keep my head down.” His tone conveyed his determination to attend the Liberty Sing whether Scott liked it or not.

  Scott was tempted to arrest him and have done with it. But in the end, family loyalty won out. “All right, but you keep your distance from your draft-dodger unionist friends, Rob. Don’t look at me like that. I know you’ve been talking to Dutch Leonard. I’ll have my eye on you.”

  Rob stood up. “There won’t be anything to see. Now, I’m going back to work before Shaw misses me. Don’t worry about telling Alafair what we talked about. If I know my sister she’s got her ear pressed to the kitchen door and heard every word.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “Sabotage is preached to and by the I.W.W at all times, and every member is fully aware of subtle methods of destroying property with a minimum risk to his liberties.”

  —The New York Times, August 19,1917

  The family was just sitting for dinner when Charlie came in from work by the back door. He was not alone. A tall, blond young man with a tattered shirt, bandaged arms, and the remnants of a black eye walked in with him. Alafair came over to meet them.

  “Mama, this is my friend from work, Henry Blackwood,” Charlie said. “Henry, meet my ma. Henry had a mishap at work and Mr. Cooper let him have the rest of the day off. I figured I’d invite him for dinner, if that’s all right. It’s just him and his uncle in that little house of theirs. I reckon he’d admire a real meal
.”

  Henry snatched off his hat, and Alafair took it from him and patted him on the shoulder. “Sure, sugar. There’re plenty of eats to go around.” She turned to Gee Dub, who was leaning back on the cabinet with his ankles crossed, looking intrigued. “Gee, pull up another chair.”

  Gee Dub fetched a chair off the porch and squeezed it in between Rob and Blanche while Charlie and Henry washed up. Alafair had covered the table with platters and bowls of fried okra, yellow squash, biscuits and milk gravy, grits, corn on the cob, brown beans, fried sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes as well. As always in summer, there were fresh-sliced tomatoes, green onions, and radishes to garnish one’s plate. It was a meatless meal, but no one noticed. Only the immediate family was at dinner today. Two parents, two sons, three young daughters, and the uncle. Henry knew he was not going to be able to keep everyone straight—except for the bearded man he was seated next to.

  Rob slapped him on the back. He hadn’t seen Henry since they had parted ways at the train station. “Well, I’ll declare. Fancy meeting you here, sport.”

  Henry was equally surprised to see his sometime champion. “Howdy, Mister. I didn’t know you were kin to Charlie, here.”

  Shaw reached across Rob to shake Henry’s hand. “You two know each other?”

  “Yessir. We traveled out on the train from Muskogee together last week. Mr. Gunn helped me…”

  Rob interrupted. “That’s a tale for another time. So you’re working at the brick factory with Charlie. Looks like you’ve added to your collection of bruises since the last time I saw you, slick.”

  “It was the strangest thing, Uncle Robin,” Charlie said. “Henry’s lucky he didn’t get killed.” He paused in case Henry wanted to tell the story, but his friend seemed more interested in buttering the fluffy biscuit in his hand.

  “What happened?” Sophronia urged.

  Charlie was only too happy to carry on. “You see, after the clay gets dug out of the hill, it’s put it in this dump car that gets pushed up on top of these big old trap doors over a conveyor belt that takes the clay to the plant. That’s what me and Henry were doing today, dumping the dirt out of the car onto the doors. When the car’s empty we’re supposed to push it down the ramp and then Dutch Leonard pulls a lever and the dirt drops down onto the belt. Well, today the lever let loose too soon and dumped poor old Henry, dump car, clay, and all into the pit. If the car hadn’t jammed the jaw crushers, Henry would have been chewed up into little bits. As it was, it was lucky he didn’t bust his legs in the fall.”

  Alafair’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, honey, that’s terrible!”

  Henry looked up from his biscuit. Her concern made him uncomfortable. “Well, I wasn’t hurt bad, Miz Tucker. Just skint up a little. I’ll be back at work tomorrow. I can’t afford to lay off, anyway.”

  “It sure stopped work for most of the morning,” Charlie said. “Dutch swears up and down he didn’t pull the lever before time, and Mr. Cooper believes him because it looks like one of the bolts had come out and the lever failed. Mr. Cooper took Henry up to the office and bandaged him up. He put me to stacking bricks for a shipment that’s supposed to go out next week. Mr. Cooper figures that it’ll take a couple of days to fix the lever and test it out.”

  “Poor Henry,” Blanche exclaimed.

  “Yeah, if he had busted his leg he wouldn’t be able to work for who knows how long. Mr. Cooper told us that there has been a spate of machinery breaking down lately. Last week there was a fire in the steam shovel boiler that held up digging for half a day. The other night, a wheel fell off one of the kiln cars and bricks spilled all over the middle of the oven. It took a whole shift to clean it up and get the cars moving through again. They turned off the furnace, but I’d have hated to be one of the fellows working in that tunnel on a July afternoon.”

  Henry’s attention was riveted on his plate, his face flushed with embarrassment at the unwanted attention.

  Charlie wasn’t finished. “You know, Billy Claude Walker thinks somebody is trying to delay production. He said all the accidents started happening after ol’ Win Avey got killed. This morning I was wondering to Henry if we’ve got us a saboteur.”

  He immediately wished he hadn’t said it when he saw the look on Alafair’s face. He’d die of humiliation if his mother forbade him to go back to the plant. His father saved him.

  Shaw scoffed. “I doubt it, son. Machinery is always breaking down, especially when it’s being put to extra use.”

  Gee Dub changed the subject by asking Henry where he was from, but Rob wasn’t listening anymore. He was thinking that if the workers at the plant had a compensation plan, Henry wouldn’t be facing ruin because of an on-the-job injury. The brick plant was a prime target for unionization. But he bit his lip and said nothing. He’d notify the regional I.W.W. office, but the workers of the Francis Vitric Brick Company would have to rely on someone else to help them organize. He had promised Alafair.

  ***

  “Henry, wait a minute. I want a word with you before you get off home.” Alafair caught Henry as he untied his horse from the post in front of the house. He doffed his hat as she walked down the front steps with a towel-covered wicker basket in her hand.

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take some of these vittles home for your supper? I’ve got enough to feed you and your uncle for a couple of meals and still have plenty of leftovers for us.”

  Henry hadn’t been fussed over so much since he left his mother’s house. He quite enjoyed it. “Thank you, ma’am. That is right kind of you. Uncle Eric’s cooking keeps us from starving, but that’s about all I can say about it.”

  “I wish you’d let me have a look at them wounds on your arms. I don’t have much faith in Mr. Cooper’s doctoring skills.”

  “Oh, no, really, ma’am, that’s not necessary. They don’t even hurt anymore.”

  “All right, then.” Alafair nodded, glanced away, then back again. Something was on her mind.

  “What is it, Miz Tucker?”

  “I’m fretted about what’s been going on at the plant. Especially after you near to got killed today. Win Avey worked at the plant, too, and he did get killed. Do you think Charlie’s right about a saboteur?”

  Henry shrugged. “Well, things like that lever failing happen all the time when you’re working with big machinery, like Mr. Tucker said. I worked at the shipyards at Port Isabel near Brownsville for a spell. Something was always breaking down or falling into the Gulf or crashing into something else. I wouldn’t worry about it none.”

  “Still, I don’t like the idea of him working there if there’s a killer on the loose.”

  She looked so troubled that Henry barely stopped himself from patting her shoulder. “Oh, now, Miz Tucker, I’d bet money that Win Avey’s death didn’t have anything to do with the brick works. But I hate for you to be worrying about Charlie. I like him. He’s a good ol’ boy. He’s full of vim and vigor. I’ll keep an eye on him for you, ma’am. Y’all been so kind to me it’s the least I can do.”

  Alafair let out a breath. She knew she ought to feel guilty for going behind her son’s back, but she didn’t. “Thank you, son. You come over any time you want. And don’t tell Charlie I talked to you. He’d wouldn’t be pleased.”

  Henry laughed at that. “No, ma’am, I reckon he wouldn’t.”

  ***

  Old Nick took off his bowler hat and began fanning himself with it. It was a hot day, and all the windows were open at Mr. Ober’s office at the Francis Vitric Brick Company. “Mr. Ober, I think you need my particular know-how to deal with your recent troubles. I’ve been keeping the peace at private companies since God was a boy. Union-breaking is my specialty.”

  Ober was unconvinced. “I’ve added on a whole new shift to try and get this blasted order out to Fort Bliss on time and I’ve put guards o
n all the machinery to keep another ‘accident’ from happening. Why should I need a professional head-buster?”

  His question raised a hint of a smile on Nick’s face. “Believe me, I’ve dealt with unionists enough to know that you ain’t going to be able to persuade them with gentle reason.”

  “I don’t need to be dealing with work slowdowns right now, nor sabotage, which is why I’m talking to you,” Ober admitted. “I’m not adverse to a bit of strong-arm persuasion, but I don’t hold with murdering strikers either.”

  “You’re the boss,” Nick said. “I’ll do it however you want.“

  Ober leaned his elbows on his desk, folded his hands under his chin, and stared out the window to his left for a long moment. Nick fanned himself with his hat.

  Finally the plant manager sat back and dropped his hands into his lap. “When can you start?”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “I Am Public Opinion

  All Men Fear Me”

  —World War I poster,

  U.S. Office of Propaganda

  The Boynton Post Office resided in the last building on the west side of Main Street, just at the junction of Main and Third, where downtown Boynton segued into residences, an odd business or two, and a couple of churches before petering out into farmland. The post office consisted of one twenty-by-twenty-foot room divided in two by a counter, behind which was a wall covered with wooden cubbyholes, each neatly labeled with a name. To the right of the front door, a long table sat beneath the window. A bulletin board to the left of the window was covered with wanted posters containing mug shots of some disreputable-looking fellows, along with physical descriptions and a list of their sins. There was no telling what color the walls were painted, for the rest of the available wall space was taken up by a display of war posters.