by Ann Tatlock
Dr. Hal must have picked up the extension in the office while Simon got on the line just in time to hear the conversation.
Aunt Sally rose from the rocker and put one small hand over her heart. "Dear God," she whispered.
Mother rose to meet her. "Now, Sally, don't start thinking the worst. We don't know whether Jim's been hurt--"
She stopped when she heard the door to the waiting room open across the hall. We heard Papa say, "Take the car, Harold. Here are the keys," and Dr. Hal replying, "Thanks, Will. I'll be back soon as I can."
Aunt Sally stepped out to the hall to meet him, and for a moment their eyes locked. "Harold--" my aunt whispered.
Dr. Hal was carrying his own new medical bag of shiny black leather. In spite of his pained expression, he looked very handsome at the moment, like a hero in a war movie. Calmly he said, "Try not to worry, Sally. Everything's going to be fine. I'll bring Jim home with me when I come." And then he quickly strode the length of the hall and disappeared into the kitchen. When we heard the screen door slam shut, Mother went to Aunt Sally and put an arm around her shoulder.
"Come on, then, there's nothing we can do right now," she said gently. "Maybe it'd be best to turn off the radio and stay busy."
"No, please, Lil," Aunt Sally fairly pleaded, "I've got to know what's going on."
Mother consented and we all resumed our places in the parlor and waited for further news bulletins. Aunt Sally let off anxious steam by alternately rocking furiously and fanning herself vigorously. Sometimes she tried doing both at once, but she'd end up getting confused and all the more flustered and frustrated, like a person trying to pat her head and rub her stomach at the same time. The boys fidgeted on the floor, trying to be patient between bulletins. Papa stopped by between patients to get updates, standing in the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his starched white jacket and rocking on his heels as he listened to whoever happened to speak up. Mother excused herself now and again to check on the girls or to finish some forgotten chore. I had removed my apron but kept it in my lap. It became wrinkled over the next couple of hours as I rolled it between my sweaty palms. I kept thinking of Uncle Jim standing in the doorway that first night Rex Atwater visited our home, looking out into the falling dusk as though the darkness were an omen of things to come. And I thought too of Mother's unusual presentiments, her feeling that something bad was going to happen. The clock on the piano ticked away the long drawn-out moments of that afternoon.
Just before three o'clock the music of the regular programming was interrupted once again by another announcement. "We have an unconfirmed report that one of the wounded picketers has succumbed to his injuries and died before he could be reached by ambulance...." Aunt Sally stopped fanning and gave out a cry, her trembling fingers resting lightly against her pale lips. At the news, the backs of all three boys went straight as ramrods, and my own stomach fluttered as though invaded by a flock of birds. Mother was with the girls when the bulletin came on, but Rufus, wide-eyed with fear himself, tried to step in as comforter. "It's not Pa," he assured his mother. "I know it's not Pa. He'd never go down so easy."
Aunt Sally nodded but continued to stare at the dial of the radio, mesmerized. The lower rims of her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.
"Don't cry, Ma," Rufus said quietly. I had rarely seen my cousin try to be consoling, and the gentleness of his words soothed my own fears somewhat, if not those of my aunt. "Pa's going to be fine. You'll see. I've just got a gut feeling about it."
The music resumed. Aunt Sally, her lips kneading themselves into a taut line, went back to fanning herself. Mother returned, and when she sat down next to me, I whispered that one man was reported dead.
She shut her eyes a moment, then asked me quietly, "Did they give a name?" I shook my head. Mother looked at Aunt Sally, but my aunt seemed hardly aware of what was going on around her.
At 3:30 another bulletin informed us that the rioting had subsided and the picketers had retreated to the refuge of the strike headquarters. Their plan, we later learned, was to resume picketing the next morning. Meanwhile, in the midst of all the mayhem, a number of the scabs had made it into the mill. Temporary housing had already been set up inside so they could stay in safety beyond the gates and would not have to brave the picket line every day.
Even after the news that the rioting had stopped, Aunt Sally refused to leave the radio. "If only I knew something," she said, wringing her hands and pacing the floor in front of the Philco. When Mother suggested she put her mind on other things--like fixing supper--Aunt Sally retorted that she couldn't chance missing any further reports.
"Can you call strike headquarters and ask somebody there about Jim?" Mother asked.
My aunt shook her head. "There aren't any telephone lines running into the warehouse. They have to make their calls from a pay phone at a drugstore several blocks away. Maybe I should catch a trolley and go there myself--"
"You'll do no such thing," Mother interrupted. "You'll only be in the way. Harold said he'd bring Jim home tonight."
And he did, though the clock had continued its agonizing journey and dusk had already begun to spread lengthy shadows across the ground before Luke, waiting and watching at the back door, cried out that the Buick had just pulled into the garage. I stepped to the kitchen window to look on while Luke and Rufus ran out to the yard to greet their father. Uncle Jim flicked the butt of a still burning cigarette into the garden. Then yelling a greeting, he draped an arm around the neck of each boy and together the three of them strode the remaining length of the yard to the house. Aunt Sally stood in the open doorway and finally allowed her tears to flow freely. I don't know whether the tears were triggered by relief at the sight of Uncle Jim or by fright at the bandage that circled his head. Perhaps it was both.
"Jim!" Aunt Sally cried, throwing her arms around him. She let out a wrenching sob and clung to Uncle Jim there in the doorway, the two of them blocking the boys and Dr. Hal from stepping inside.
Uncle Jim shushed his wife and patted her back, saying kindly, "I'm all right, Sally. I'm all right. Don't fret yourself so." Aunt Sally sniffed and stepped back, dabbing at her moist blotchy cheeks with a hankie and forcing her pale lips into a brave but fleeting smile. She took one deep breath to reinforce herself, then grasped Uncle Jim's hand and led him to a chair at the kitchen table. Uncle Jim sat down with Aunt Sally on one side of him, Luke on the other. Rufus sat across the table from his father. The rest of us stood. When the chairs stopped scraping across the kitchen floor and everyone was settled, Aunt Sally tentatively lifted her fingers to the bandage across Uncle Jim's brow. "How did it happen?" she asked.
Dr. Hal answered. "He took a clip from a billy club. Bad enough to need stitches but not so bad that he won't be good as new inside a week."
"Now, don't fuss," Uncle Jim said, taking Aunt Sally's trembling hand in his own. "Harold sewed me up just fine. There's other men hurt worse."
Dr. Hal nodded in agreement. "A few bad bumps and broken bones. Thank God we weren't trying to deal with bullet wounds. Shots were fired, but evidently the police were using blanks. Just trying to scare the strikers, that's all. Still, it was a lopsided affair--the police with their billy clubs and tear gas against a group of men whose only weapons were their fists."
Uncle Jim chuckled. "Some of the strikers were swinging their signs, though. The two-by-fours those signs were nailed to turned out to be pretty good weapons."
Aunt Sally remarked breathlessly, "They said on the radio one man had been killed. I thought--"
"I'm sorry for what you've been through this afternoon, Sally," Uncle Jim interrupted. "I should have thought to try to reach you, but the strike hospital was in such a commotion I just couldn't get away to the phone. After Harold fixed me up, I tried to help out with the other men the best I could. I just wasn't thinking about what you might be hearing on the radio. I'm really sorry."
"Who was it--the one killed?"
"A man named Jeremiah Carlson. One o
f the finest grain mixers at the mill. Never missed a day of work in more than twenty years--not that I remember, anyway."
"Did he have a family?"
Uncle Jim nodded. "A wife and five children."
"Five children! Oh, that poor woman."
Mother, who had been standing by silently with her hands clasped in front of her, asked, "How could this have happened, Jim? How could it have gotten so out of hand that a man would be killed?"
"A couple of the sheriff's deputies got carried away with their duties," Uncle Jim explained, his shoulders sagging wearily as he spoke. "They just started beating the man and didn't know when to quit. Jeremiah was a big man, but I never so much as saw him swat a fly. I don't know what he did to provoke the deputies, but I reckon it wasn't anything other than the fact that he was there."
Mother turned pale and laid a hand across her chest. Aunt Sally wiped away a couple more tears that had silently slipped down her cheeks.
Rufus, clenching and unclenching his fists on the tabletop, said, "They ought to go to jail, Pa--those deputies that killed that man. They ought to rot in jail."
Uncle Jim cast a sorrowful look across the table at his son. "And just who's going to arrest the sheriff's deputies?" he asked. "Even if they were arrested, there's not a jury in the land that'd convict them of murder."
"But it was murder, Pa."
"I know it was, Rufus, but the law don't see it that way."
A hush fell over the kitchen, the quiet that accompanies disbelief. We were all stunned, not quite able to comprehend that something so awful had interrupted the peaceful unfolding of our lives.
The silence was broken after a moment when Luke asked loudly, "Does your head hurt, Pa?"
Uncle Jim, obviously amused by the question, started to chuckle, but his laughter was cut short by one of his usual fits of coughing. When his chest stopped heaving long enough for him to speak, he said, "Sure, it stings a little." Then he added with a sheepish grin, "Especially when I cough."
"I'll get you something for the pain," Dr. Hal said. He turned to the rest of us. "Jim wouldn't take anything down at the strike hospital, though I warned him the pain would only get worse before it got better."
Before Dr. Hal left, Mother asked, "How many men were hurt, Harold?"
Dr. Hal chewed his lip and thought a moment. "Out of two hundred on the picket line, I'd say maybe fifty or so had injuries that needed medical attention. You can imagine that Dr. Wilson and the nurses and I were kept pretty busy. I have to say that Rex Atwater and his men set up a fine little hospital down there in the warehouse. Can't match Mercy, of course, but it's not bad for a makeshift facility."
"How many arrested? Do you know?"
"I can't answer that for sure. I suspect the numbers will be in tomorrow's newspapers, though. Mr. Thiel will want his victory announced, of course, and I'm sure the editors of the morning edition will be all too happy to oblige. Well, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go rummage through the medicine cabinet--see what I can find."
Dr. Hal headed for the office, and before his footsteps had ceased to echo in the hallway, Luke tugged on his father's sleeve and asked eagerly for more details of the riot.
"Not now, Luke," Aunt Sally replied firmly. "Your father needs to rest. Soon as you take something for the pain, Jim, I want you to go on upstairs and lie down."
"Can't argue with you there, I guess." Uncle Jim lifted a hand to his forehead and winced.
"And I don't want you going back to the line tomorrow--"
"Now, Sally, you know I've got to go back--"
"Please, Jim, not after--"
"My place is with the men--"
Papa rushed into the kitchen then, interrupting the debate before it turned into an argument. "Harold says you've been hurt, Jim."
"Just a crack on the head, Will. Nothing serious. You know my old skull's too thick for them to cause much damage," he remarked lightly. "Harold got me fixed up all right."
"I'm sure he did a fine job," Papa said as he carefully lifted the gauze to inspect the stitches. The wound looked like a small length of railroad track cutting across the creases of Uncle Jim's forehead. "Well, good chance you'll be left with a little souvenir of the strike," Papa predicted. "Otherwise, it should heal nicely. You'll have a pretty bad headache, if you don't already." Uncle Jim nodded, and Papa continued. "Harold's bringing you something for the pain, then I suggest you get some rest."
"I was just sending him up to bed," Aunt Sally said. "Come on, we can intercept Harold on the way, and you can take your medicine upstairs."
She helped her husband up, though he accepted her help reluctantly. "I'm fine, Sally. No need to fuss," he repeated. They had reached the kitchen doorway when Uncle Jim remembered his sons. They were both staring after him expectantly. "Well, come on, then," he said. "Let me get myself stretched out on the bed, then I'll tell you some of what happened."
The boys jumped up as if a spring had ejected them from the chairs and followed after their parents. Simon quietly but just as quickly tagged along. Ever the doctor's son, he was undoubtedly less interested in the riot itself than in the wounded men left in its wake.
Papa, Mother, and I were left alone. We looked briefly at one another, then turned our eyes away, reluctant to speak. Mother untied her apron and hung it on the hook on the inside of the pantry door. She smoothed the wrinkles out of her dress, sighed, and asked rhetorically of Papa, "Where's it going to end, William?" Her expression said that the doom she had predicted would surely come.
The one small fan in the corner turned its head from side to side, giving off mechanical sighs of contentment as it blew warm air across the room. In the glass-covered cabinets along the walls, the plates and cups nestled placidly together like sleeping children. The refrigerator hummed complacently, as though sated by the food in its belly. The whole room was quiet and at peace. And for an odd moment, I envied those objects their untroubled existence and wished that I, too, could be a piece of wood or a stone or a bit of metal that could simply be, without at the same time having to feel anxious or afraid--even if it meant feeling nothing at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Sometimes that summer it seemed as though the whole world was reeling from one big terrible hangover after the party of the Roaring Twenties. We had danced in a frenzy through the long night of prosperity, but when morning came in the form of the stock market crash, our muddled roaring was silenced. We found ourselves sick, angry, frustrated, and maybe a little bit sorry for our overindulgence, and we were now staggering about somewhat recklessly, trying to restore order to the ruined party room.
In early August, the farmers in Iowa--having banded themselves together in a group known as the Farmers' Holiday Association--went on strike in an effort to force up farm prices. At that time, hogs were going for three cents a pound; milk, two cents a quart. By August 14, some fifteen hundred farmers, joined by the Milk Producers' Association, were guarding all the roads into Sioux City, virtually halting all milk and livestock deliveries to the market there. The picketers blockaded the roads with spiked telegraph poles and logs and turned back hundreds of trucks. Gallons of milk were poured into roadway ditches, though thankfully some milk was confiscated and distributed free on the streets of Sioux City.
From there the strike spread to Omaha, Council Bluffs, and Des Moines, where strikers used the same tactic of blockading the streets. The governor of Iowa ordered the roads cleared, and a number of deputies were sworn in to reinforce the sheriffs' troops. A few trucks, escorted by armed deputies, were able to make it in to market.
In all areas of the strike, the guns of the lawmen were pointed at the picketing farmers, but no shots were fired. Plenty of men were arrested, though, and hauled off to jail.
From Iowa the strike eventually fanned out across America's farm belt. Farmers in Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Montana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Nebraska all organized to strike for cost of production, and all--to some extent or another--withheld their
goods from market. Everywhere guns were raised. Everywhere men were arrested. That particular upheaval stretched all the way into autumn before it was eventually settled.
Meanwhile, the rumor mill was busy spitting out endless speculation that the picketers were not actually themselves farmers but were most likely groups of unemployed men led by Communist agitators. Many people genuinely believed that the strikes and riots plaguing our country were about to usher in a Communist revolution. Others played on these fears, using the Communist threat as a convenient excuse to dismiss even the most reasonable demands of the American worker. I've no doubt that the nation's mass hysteria added to the problems that our own local strikers faced down at the grain mill.
As the strike at the grain mill wore on, reports, editorials, cartoons--even advertisements--in the local papers warned of the attempt of a Red takeover there in our own city. One editorial writer called the strike a Communist plot to assume control of the Thiel Mill and called on all men of patriotic persuasion to come forward and be deputized, to join the heroic throng fighting to preserve democracy, freedom, and the American way. Uncle Jim's doleful response to the editorial: "You'd never know that all we're asking for is better working conditions and ten cents more an hour."
Rex Atwater, as he himself predicted, was accused of being a ruthless perpetrator of Communist doctrine, and writers of letters to the editor called on him to go home to Moscow where he belonged. Half- and full-page ads painted a picture of national rebellion and encouraged people not to be hoodwinked by the wily Communists into making contributions to the strike machine. One cartoon, run on the front page of the morning edition, showed a flag with hammer and sickle flying atop the grain mill, with the caption "Thiel Mill, 1933."
Emerson Thiel, knowing a strategic advantage when he saw one, jumped on the anti-Communist bandwagon whole hog. "The strikers," he was quoted as saying, "are trying to make it appear that their central concern is the wage issue. But our workers have always been paid fair wages, comparable to or better than the wages of grain mill workers all over the Midwest. They have no grounds for complaint. No, the real issue here is Communism. The organizers of this strike are Communists, and they've got our workers in their dangerous clutches. They've brainwashed our men into believing that Communism is a better way than democracy. They are hoping that this strike is the beginning of a revolution that will overthrow all existing government!"