First Papers (29 page)

With a fury of purpose, Alexandra flung herself into her clothes. She
had
to do something to help. What, she had no idea, but something. An idea would come.

During the entire morning she concentrated, but her mind remained empty of plan. She thought back to the day Damsie and Josie had left for home, but no clue appeared to guide her. It was a Wednesday afternoon when the victory news came, but as it turned out, they didn’t leave until Saturday, and neither did Rico and Maria. She and Alida Paige had consulted with Miss Mainley, and her ruling was firm: the school week had to be finished out.

They were terminable days for all the children, and for everybody else. Stiva nearly exploded the roof off at the
Times
for calling the strike tactics “the greatest menace since the French Revolution,” and denounced “this blockhead idiocy, not in the yellow press, mind you, but in the
Times.”

Fran and Fee quarreled, Damsie and Josie were like jumping jacks, and by Saturday when they at last said good-bye and went off, it was actually a relief all around.

Alida took them with Rico and Maria, and later reported every detail of the trip and the children’s homecoming. But, Alexandra thought now, hadn’t there been a dryness in her way of phrasing things? A subdued note, a bit lifeless?

Lifeless. Listless. Did Alida miss the hustle and bustle of Rico and Maria, as she went back to her lovely house, again to be empty all day? Perhaps Alida, too, was still mourning the loss of the children.

It was days and days since they had seen each other. They had grown closer while they were sharing the experience of having strangers’ children live with them, and it had been pleasant, but since their departure—

I’ll take a walk, Alexandra thought. I’m beginning to feel as unhappy as poor Fee.

“Come in, Alexandra,” Alida said eagerly. “What a nice surprise!”

She was warmed by Alida’s delighted welcome, and her doubts about dropping in unexpectedly, which had accompanied her as the route of her walk kept drifting closer and closer to Charming Street, vanished before she had taken the hatpins out of her old spring hat.

“You’re busy,” she said a moment later, startled at what she saw.

“But I need a rest; I can’t take in another word.” Alida led the way into the dining room and said, “Sit down, while I make tea. Read some of them, and you’ll see what I’ve been doing for the last few days.”

The table had been extended by two leaves inserted at its center, and its surface was covered from edge to edge with neat piles of letters, clippings, notes written by Evan on pad paper, and a few telegrams.

Each pile had an oblong label on it, like a shipping tag, with a crayoned name or date or phrase. The label nearest Alexandra said, “Jails,” and the second “Single Taxers.” A third was “Traffic Ordinance,” the next “Socialists,” and another, “Anarchists.” Beyond that was “Beatings” and by its side, “Deaths.”

A shiver moved Alexandra’s arms and shoulders. She picked up the first assortment, “Jails.” Alida had said, “Read some of them,” and she began with a small page in Evan’s writing, disconnected notes, like words and figures jotted down as reminders for a lecturer.

“First test of const; 41 jailed. Incl. League att’y, Smithers. March 4 Total-200; Overflow to Santa A., Riv., etc. S.D.
Tribune
public stand: Taking men out of jails, hanging and shooting them.”

Attached was a clipped editorial from the
San Diego Tribune,
of which she had never heard. Underlined in red crayon were phrases like “hanging and shooting them.” In actual print, she thought, in an American newspaper.

Alexandra put it down in a strange sudden fear, and set the rest of the pile down too. She looked at the stack marked “Beatings,” without touching it. Under the label she saw more penciled jottings: “Hoey, 68 Third Degree; kicked stomach, groin. Rupture—may die.”

“Isn’t it frightful?” Alida said as she came in with a tray.

“What
is
this?”

“I’m trying to help Evan, organizing it by subject, and doing a summary for him to use in California.”

“His trip, oh yes.” She sensed that Alida expected her to understand perfectly by now, but she was still bewildered.

“It’s a good thing he had to put it off this long. By now the Free Speech League in San Diego is battling a new case every week, and a second California chapter is forming. He may have to stay on for quite a time.”

Alexandra was silent. Somewhere she had heard or read of free-speech riots in California, but it had slipped away as if it had nothing of importance for her. Suddenly it was near and intimate; Alida’s grave manner, Evan’s involvement, all made the transformation.

“Stefan must have told me what’s going on there, but I’m ashamed to admit—”

“Hardly anybody in the East does know about it,” Alida said, “but it’s spreading like wildfire out there.”

“Do they know how it started?”

“It’s so strange,” Alida said thoughtfully. “Ever since San Diego was settled, it had a tradition about open-air meetings and then overnight the tradition vanished.”

“Meetings for labor?” Alexandra asked.

“And for everything else. Civic reform, the I.W.W., church revival meetings, socialism, anarchism, Single Taxers, Votes for Women—”

“I never knew that either,” Alexandra said, suddenly approving the inner spirit of the Far West. “I usually think of Bret Harte or the Gold Rush when I—” She broke off hastily.

Alida was absorbed in her own train of thought. “There always had been heckling and shoving, but since January the heckling has been transformed into brawls and riots, with mobs of roughnecks and vigilantes, and finally the police, ordered to keep the peace, keep traffic moving, and no questions asked about how.”

“And since then,” Alexandra said positively, “it’s been like Russia, more and more every day.”

“It’s sickening, it truly is.”

“I wish Stefan were here,” Alexandra said impulsively. “We’ve never heard
you
speak out on such things, and you make it fascinating. And so clear too. Please go on.”

Alida blushed a little, but she was touched. How lovely, to speak so freely and sweetly to a friend. In praise and kindness, words became blessings; how infrequently were such words used.

It was not until they were parting an hour later, that Alexandra remembered her desire to discuss her worry over Fee. It was just as well, perhaps, that she hadn’t been able to. Was it possible, after all, for any mother to report on the lonely sadness of a child?

At the door, Alida said, “We’ll see you before Evan leaves next week.”

“So soon?”

“Next Thursday—didn’t I say that, with all the gabbing I did? His Pullman tickets are in his wallet.”

“Only four days from now. May I tell Stiva?”

“Tell anybody—and I’m so glad you dropped by, Alexandra. Thank you, I had a lovely time.”

Alexandra suddenly laughed. “I could live in America for three hundred years,” she said, “and I’d never learn to send off a guest the way you do.”

Alida’s responsive little chuckle drifted after her, and she walked away in elation. She had had a lovely time too, though so caressing an adjective would never occur to her, for a visit that included revelations of beatings, jails, prisoners, death. But it had stimulated her and sent her away refreshed. Soon now her instincts might yield up a hint of how Fee—

She stopped on the sidewalk. The April wind had grown playful and its fingers snatched at her hat and her skirt. It was nearly dark; the wide sky curled at its edges with pink and golden plumes. She stood still, not daring to move lest the idea drift away.

Then she hurried the rest of the way to the house. Stefan would be demanding supper any minute.

Fran said, “Hello, Mama, I decided you were lost,” and Alexandra said, “I’ll be down in a minute, Franny. Light the oven, like a good girl.”

Upstairs Fee’s door was closed; she knocked twice before Fee said, “Who is it?”

“I have some news, Fee,” she answered. “You’ll be interested.”

Alexandra could hear her throw down a book, grumble as it slid to the floor, and then get up from bed where she doubtless had lain motionless, reading, hour after hour since she had come home from school.

“What kind of news, Mama?”

“You look worse, Fee, what’s wrong, dear?”

“I’m not worse, honestly. I haven’t even coughed.”

“It’s just an impression probably,” Alexandra conceded. But her heart ached at Fee’s appearance—eyes strained, skin without color, hair disheveled. “My news,” she said importantly, “is about Evan Paige and a trip.”

“What trip?”

“To California,
that
trip. He’s leaving in four days.”

“Really and truly? Are you sure?”

“Positive. His Pullman tickets are in his wallet this very minute.”

“Oh, Mama!” Fee’s voice rose in excitement. “Will he tell me every single thing about the train when he gets back?”

“I know he will,” Alexandra said unhesitatingly. “He will notice each detail, so he won’t forget anything and when he comes home he will describe every single one.”

Fee’s face was transformed, and Alexandra thought, I can explain that she needed something to look forward to, and Evan will do it for her. Aloud she said, “And you ought to start a secret list right away. Put down all the things you’re going to ask him about. Don’t show it to me or Franny or anybody—it’s only for you and Evan.”

“It’ll be a mile long,” Fee said. “I would start it tonight if I had a special notebook—the kind you can lock.”

“Tonight’s a good idea, Firuschka. I’ll give you some money and you go downtown after supper and buy the right kind.”

“Right after supper—oh, I’m so happy.”

Fee hugged her mother with such vigor that Alexandra’s bones winced.

F
OR A MOMENT,
E
VAN
Paige stood at the edge of the pitted dirt road, too shocked to move or speak. In the hot darkness of the California night, the only light came from the crescent of moon above them, and from the dimmed headlamps of one of the four cars making a semicircle around the cleared place where the vigilantes had dragged their prisoner.

“Sing it, you anarchist bastard,” one of them shouted, “or you’ll get kilt with this here gun.”

There were fourteen or fifteen of them, armed with rifles, whips, metal piping, and they had ordered Ben Reitman to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

As they dragged him from the first car, he had gone limp, but now he was pulled half-upright on his knees, his bald head gluey with sweat, his glasses hanging from one ear, his shirt torn from his body.

“Damn you, sing.”

With each note that squawked up from his tight throat, they kicked him, beat him, shrieking and shouting in their indomitable glory, while the single victim, alone, attempting bravery, attempting dignity, tried to produce the syllables and even the melody.

“‘By—the—dawn’s—’”

He gulped for air, and one of the vigilantes struck Reitman with his gun; the butt hit his eyebrow and blood jumped forward from bone and flesh, leaping down over his eye.

“Go on, sing it,” one of them shouted. “You quit singin’ again, I’ll kill you, you goddam red bastard.”

Paige rushed forward, all at once released from the prison of his horror. “Let that man alone, you animals,” he shouted, and heard his voice carried off in the din of their savagery, heard it reduced, made puny, impotent, foolish.

“‘Early—light—’”

Paige charged at the line of circling backs; two of them turned toward him, and in a perfect harmony of timing, without apparent effort, lifted him off the ground by his arms, forcing them to bend at the elbows, lifting him, half swinging him between them as if he were a happy child in a happy game being swung through the air by loving grownups, indulgent, ready to play.

“You stay the hell out of this, Pop,” one of the men said in his ear, “or you get the same as this here red bastard anarchist.”

They pitched him like an awkwardly baled package to the edge of the road. A shout of laughter tore the hot dark air, as Evan got back to his feet, and Reitman’s voice stopped, sheared off on a syllable. A man in overalls was stuffing a small American flag down Reitman’s throat. Sounds of retching, hideous, unending, took the place of the strangled singing.

Evan started forward, his convulsive muscles going into spasms of retching too. He controlled the spasms, thinking, Not now. Bitterness invaded him. He had been so sure that some of the reports were farfetched. Now, after three weeks with people he trusted, he knew that the truth had outdistanced the reports.

“Don’t let him choke hisself,” somebody said with a voice of authority. “Yank it out quick now.”

The sounds stopped except for a moaning from the road. Evan inched forward, and for the first time saw that beyond the immediate ground was a wispy hedge and then a farmhouse. From the privy at the back of the house, there now came one of the youngest of the vigilantes, a boy, straw-colored, and downy still. He carried a newspaper made into a giant scoop, and he roared with joy as he called out, “Who’s got a spreader? Anybody got a lathe or stick or somethin’ to spread with?”

“Hold it a minute, Ernie,” somebody answered, matching Ernie’s roar with exploding laughter of his own, appreciative, admiring of Ernie’s ingenuity and cleverness. “I’m just heatin’ up the tar bucket a bit, won’t be a minute. That’ll hold it real good.”

Evan dived into the wall of bodies blocking him off from Reitman. Instantly he was trapped, thrown to the ground, kicked in the ribs, stomach, head. He could not rise beyond a kneeling position; a thick-bodied giant with hands of stone pushed down on him with tons of power, grinding, sending him flat once more.

The tarring began. Evan saw that it was not heavily or evenly put on, but it was viscous, brutal, sinful as nothing he had ever seen in his entire half-century of living. Ernie had found no lathe, no stick or spreader, but with a newspaper folded over and over, he was covering over the strokes of tar, spreading the stench and foulness of human excrement over it on Reitman’s flesh, shrieking in savage whoops all the while, bellowing and gasping at his own joke.