California Gold (105 page)

A trolley passed, bell ringing. I and Mariposa was a busy downtown intersection in the city of twenty-five thousand. There were buildings of Victorian gingerbread on the corners, trolley tracks, trolley wires, and modern autos along with farm wagons, pedestrians, and horsemen. The Wobblies were by now a familiar sight in town; what little attention they generated was mostly silent, mostly hostile.

Marquez put a foot on the soapbox. The toe of his shoe was split, showing a dirty sock. His stained and wrinkled black suit resembled a priest’s, but his shirt was red silk. Mukerji found Marquez’s seediness quite distasteful. Like most Hindustanis, he bathed every day if it was possible, and considered personal hygiene almost as important as one’s religion.

“Sure you’re up to this, Diego?” Frank Little asked. His good eye shifted here and there, searching out potential danger.

“Certainly. If not me, who else?” Marquez said. Above his long beard his cheeks glistened as if they were greased.

Sometimes Marquez felt a vast futility about this campaign. A lot of comrades had come to Fresno in the fall, riding the rods from Denver, Salt Lake, Chicago. But a lot of them were gone now, scared out by the billy clubs of Chief Shaw’s police, the midnight torchings of Wobbly tents out at the western city limits, the screaming editorials in the
Morning Republican
and the
Sacramento Bee
, the vagrancy arrests, the militant patriotic wrath of sentencing judges, the brutal jail with its bread-and-water diet and its water cure. A lot of the comrades had worked off their sentences with leaf rakes in Courthouse Park, then fled. Others had pleaded guilty and been paroled on condition that they leave town.

Still, Marquez refused to quit. On the twentieth of December last, the Fresno trustees had unanimously passed the anti-speaking ordinance. Marquez was determined to test it and test it until they smashed it, or the campaign smashed him.

Which, given his bleary head and burning skin, it might.

He stepped up on the box. The intersection tilted forty-five degrees and swam out of focus, and his gut fluttered. Then the intersection slowly tilted back to horizontal, and forty-five degrees the other way. Finally it settled to normal. A light breeze fluttered the red banner.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I address you once more on the subject of free speech, which is guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution.”

The ex-priest’s audience consisted of his two comrades and a painted wooden Indian chief outside a tobacco shop. Gopal Mukerji, smiling and earnest, offered his papers to the empty air. Marquez swung into his standard oration.

“The war we are waging is being fought all across California. International Workers of the World campaigns for freedom of speech in San Francisco, Bakersfield, Brawley, and many other places.”

He eulogized the First Amendment and damned the Fresno authorities for abridging it. It was part of the IWW strategy not to speak directly to labor issues in these soapbox addresses, but to stand instead as defenders of fundamental rights, of keeping the streets open for free expression. Which of course included keeping the parks and plazas open for rallies to organize the railroad and field-workers of the Valley towns. Both the IWW and its enemies understood the scenario, though most street-corner listeners did not.

Marquez spoke passionately for five minutes, flailing away at the air with flamboyant gestures. He collected an audience of three: a coarse-faced farm woman with her adolescent son, and a dandy in a checked vest who cleaned his teeth with a gold pick while he listened. Marquez then heard the siren. Distant, but coming fast.

Gopal Mukerji’s brown eyes darted to Frank Little, who fanned back his coat and unbuttoned his vest, leaving the pistol butt in the clear.

The eyes of the young Hindustani grew round, and his smile wavered. He’d been in Fresno, taking part in the campaign, only for a week. He had not been rousted from the streets before.

The gent with the gold toothpick darted into a dry-goods store. The farm lady said, “We’re late, Rupert,” and hurried the gawky lad away, just as the police sedan careened into sight behind a hay wagon on I Street.

Marquez rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers, trying to clear his vision. “Remember, Gopal—fall down limp if they seize you.”

“I remember, Diego,” Mukerji said with a fervent nod. He spoke English with the clipped upper-class accents of his white schoolmasters in the Jullundur district.

“You won’t catch me falling down,” Little said. “I ain’t going back in the tank one more time.”

Marquez shrugged. “As you wish.” He stayed on the box by the fluttering banner. The black police sedan, its canvas top down, screamed in to the curb. A small crowd gathered across the street.

Five Fresno policemen in brass buttons and blue serge piled out like cops in a one-reel chase comedy. Marquez’s heartbeat sped. There was nothing funny about these men with their tall hats, soup-strainer mustaches, and billy clubs. He’d met all but one of them before.

“Get down from there, Marquez,” said the sergeant, brandishing his billy. “You’re in violation of the anti-speaking ordinance, same as you were last Tuesday, and the week before, and the week previous to that.”

Marquez stayed on the box. “Sergeant Lummis, I’m exercising my right of free speech. I refuse to be moved.”

Lummis was a big, hearty man with a good-natured face, everyone’s uncle. He sighed. “You’re under arrest.”

Gopal Mukerji spoke up politely and seriously. “Sergeant, if I may point out something—”

“Oh, we got a new Wobbly here,” another policeman said. “A rag-head.”

“For Christ’s sake, Gopal,” Frank Little whispered.

Mukerji wouldn’t be deterred. “Sirs, the Constitution of this great republic guarantees to all men the right of expression without interference.”

“Is that a fact, sir?” Sergeant Lummis said, edging up to him. “I didn’t realize I was in the presence of such a distinguished and informed person as yourself. A regular street lawyer, is that what we have here?”

“No, sir,” Mukerji said, misunderstanding the sarcasm as sincerity. “I am Mr. Gopal Mukerji, a field-worker. It is kind of you to allow me to state my view.”

“Jesus,” Frank Little groaned, slipping back into shadows by the store fronts.

Lummis grinned. “Why, sure, rag-head. Just any time.” His arm flew up and his billy smashed across Mukerji’s nose. The Indian screamed as blood spurted out. Sergeant Lummis was quick for a man of his age and bulk, sidestepping so Mukerji’s blood splattered Marquez’s trousers. A cop swung his billy into Marquez’s spine, and he was pitched off the soapbox.

Two policemen caught Marquez and began to pound him with their clubs, while two others seized Mukerji and worked on him. The corner of I and Mariposa resounded with the whap and crunch of billies. A gentleman in the small crowd of spectators applauded.

“Don’t fight them,” Marquez shouted, hanging limp in the hands of a cop. He shielded his head with his arms but otherwise offered no resistance. Blue legs and backs hid him from Mukerji, who was himself surrounded. Lummis kicked Mukerji’s ribs repeatedly. In the shade by the store front, Frank Little drew his revolver partway, then gave up and fled down the street. Mukerji’s cries and the pulpy sound of billies followed him as he ran.

The booking officer asked their names. Mukerji had been coached. He smiled politely.

“John Doe, sir.”

Asked his name, Marquez said, “Harrison Gray Otis.”

“I’ll kill one of these fuckers someday,” Sergeant Lummis muttered behind them.

The police threw them in a cell with three other Wobblies, previously identified on the blotter as Woodrow Wilson, Leland Stanford, and John L. Sullivan. Because Marquez was obviously ill, the Wobblies made room for him on the only bunk.

Mukerji sat down in the corner with a forlorn air. Messrs. Wilson, Stanford, and Sullivan were in good fettle considering their ragged state, their two-day incarceration, and the general hostility of their jailers. They immediately tried to buck up the new prisoners by singing “The Red Flag,” a Wobbly anthem.

Then raise the scarlet standard high,

Beneath its folds, we’ll live and die.

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,

We’ll keep the red flag flying—

“Shut your mouths in there,” boomed the voice of Sergeant Lummis. He came stumping along the aisle, peeled down to his singlet and chewing a cigar. He looked less like a kindly uncle, more like everyone’s bad relative.

Lummis raked his billy along the bars. “Welcome to Fresno jail, boys. Four of you been here before, but we got a new one with us today. Come up here, Mr. Rag-Head.”

Mukerji obeyed wanly. Blood had dried brown under his bruised nose and a large purple-yellow ring was forming around his right eye.

“Sir, that is an offensive term,” he said, staying out of reach of Lummis’s billy. “We demand our rights. Also the presence of an attorney.”

The sergeant furiously chewed the end of his cigar and whacked the bars with the billy. “Oh, you demand, do you? Well, Mr. Rag-Head, I’ll tell you what we do with hotheads who demand things in Fresno. We cool ’em down with a little something called the water cure.”

The scarecrow calling himself Woodrow Wilson stepped forward. “Lummis, Father Marquez is desperately sick. If you turn more water on him—”

“He ain’t no father, he’s a goddamn communist agitator,” Lummis interrupted. “The water it is.”

Woodrow Wilson grabbed the bars. “You’re liable to kill him.”

Lummis put his palm over Woodrow Wilson’s face and shoved. “Good. That’ll be one less Wobbly. Elmer? Let’s unroll that fire hose in here. Get a couple more of the boys. Time to give Mr. Rag-Head a Fresno jail welcome.”

The fire hose snaked all the way into the cell area from a hydrant outside the jail’s back door. A jailer turned on the hydrant and the cannon blast of water blew the unsuspecting Mukerji off his feet. The other three prisoners crouched around Marquez, trying to shield him. In the long run it helped not at all.

The Wobblies were sprayed for fifteen minutes, then given a half hour’s respite and sprayed again. Lummis and the jailers kept at it throughout the afternoon. Other cops drifted in from time to time, most of them wearing black rubber waders; the jail cells were not designed for drainage. By 7
P.M.
the corridors and all the cells were a foot deep in water.

At half past eight Sergeant Lummis excused himself; his wife and six children were waiting supper. Going out, he called, “Keep it up, boys. The longer the better.”

Gopal Mukerji crouched in the water. He’d removed his turban and slipped it under his shirt in an effort to save it. Strings of hair hung over his brown forehead and his face had lost its cheery innocence. He gazed at the jail corridor with shocked rage. How could human beings retaliate so cruelly for the mere exercise of a right guaranteed to all citizens of this beautiful state?

The jailer named Elmer opened three high windows at the end of the corridor and chilly night air swept in. Soaked, Gopal Mukerji began to shiver, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Behind him, Marquez raved on the bunk, barely conscious.

A cop thrust the fire hose through the bars. “Another bath, you lice. Before we’re done we’ll clean you up real good.” Water shot from the nozzle and hit Gopal Mukerji with enough force to stagger him. In one corner, Woodrow Wilson, Leland Stanford, and John L. Sullivan groveled against the wall.

“Stop it. I had enough,” Leland Stanford wailed as the stream beat and bruised him. Gopal Mukerji glared at him through the roaring spray. He wouldn’t be so cowardly. He would fight this outrageous cruelty. And not in the passive way that had proved itself futile.

The dirt road ran east and west, baking in the sunshine. To the east lay Bowles, to the west the hamlet of Raisin. Arbors stretched north and south into the hazy distance. Men in straw hats and loose white clothes worked among the vines.

Gopal Mukerji staggered along, supporting Marquez. The former priest’s black suit was incredibly filthy, and Mukerji wasn’t much cleaner. Sweat streamed down Marquez’s face, his purblind eyes slitted against the sun’s glare. Sergeant Lummis had personally broken Marquez’s eyeglasses and thrown away the frames.

Suddenly Marquez’s legs gave out. “Oh dear me,” Mukerji exclaimed, struggling. The weight was too much, and Marquez tumbled in the dust, rolling halfway down the side of a roadside ditch.

Frightened, Mukerji knelt beside his fallen comrade. Unfastening the end of his soiled turban, he unwound it until it was long enough to reach Marquez’s face, then blotted the perspiration. He could feel the heat of his comrade’s sickness,

Mukerji rocked back on his haunches, casting a forlorn eye at the flat valley and endless arbors. Silent workers saw the pair but made no move to aid them. Gopal Mukerji felt a renewed rage and sorrow. He was alone and lost in this cruel land he’d entered with such soaring hope. He didn’t know what to do…

A shadow fell over Marquez’s greasy cheek. The man who stood there was about seventy, small and wiry, with a dark leathery face and big work-hardened hands. He removed his straw hat and regarded the fallen man and Mukerji.

“Buenos días, señor. Soy Ramón Obregón.”

“Please, I don’t understand. Only English.”

“I said I am Ramón Obregón. In charge of these men.” He gave a nod at the nearby field-workers. “What happened to this man?”

“He was speaking in Fresno. They locked us in jail and gave us their water cure. They let us out two days ago.”

“Two days, and you’re only this far south of Fresno? It isn’t even ten miles.”

“I know, but he can’t go fast. Just a few steps, then he falters. The fever and now the belly sickness—they’re eating him away.”

“Yes, I can smell the result of the belly sickness.”

Ramón Obregón crouched down, waving his straw hat gently between his knees and watching the hot silver sky. “Not good for workingmen to speak in this part of the Valley. Not unless they confine themselves to saying, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”