Haymarket (26 page)

It was Schaack’s letter that convinced Ebersold to request an appointment with Harrison “to discuss the citizens’ petition.” When the two men met, the mayor told Ebersold that he agreed with the petition and believed that Bonfield had engaged, “with some frequency,” in abominable behavior. “He should be disciplined,” Harrison announced, “perhaps removed.” A pleased Ebersold started to commend the mayor for his bold leadership in the matter, when, with the raising of a hand, Harrison cut him short. “Unfortunately,” he said, his voice sounding strained, “a number of influential persons have intervened on Bonfield’s behalf, emphasizing above all his superb work in keeping the city from falling into the hands
of terrorists and foreigners. After weighing the conflicting testimony carefully,” the mayor said, “I’ve found myself coming down on their side of the argument.”

Stunned, Ebersold could barely stammer out, “Do you mean, Your Honor, that John Bonfield is not—not to be—disciplined?”

“Not for now at least. What the future might bring I can’t predict. For now Captain Bonfield will be allowed to retain his command. However, I will expect you to keep a much closer eye on him.”

“Frankly, I find him a puzzle, unfathomable really,” Spies said. Michael Schwab, who worked with Spies at the
Arbeiter
, nodded in agreement. “But he’s a most intriguing puzzle, as impressive a young man as I’ve ever met.” The two had come from the
Arbeiter
office after putting the paper to bed and were drinking beer with Lucy and Lizzie in the Parsons’s flat.

“There’s something of the monomaniac about him,” the gentle Schwab added. “He’s deeply silent, deeply compelling.”

“Maybe Lingg is silent because he doesn’t understand English,” Lucy suggested, looking up from the white cambric skirt she was sewing for Nina Van Zandt. “He’s only been here a few weeks.”

“No, not having the language is the least of it,” Schwab said. “The man lives inside himself.”

“He’s hiding from the ladies, Spies added with a twinkle. “Lingg is remarkably handsome. A man of natural poise and physical assurance.”

“And does that make you uneasy, my dear Spies?” Lizzie asked teasingly, “August Spies finally has competition, and from a younger man, no less, for female attention.”

Spies laughed. “Lingg wins hands down, I promise you. He has the most extraordinary eyes you’ve ever seen—steel gray, penetrating, somehow all at once ice cold and burning with intensity. He’s the sort of man who assigns no value to his attractiveness, and thus enhances it.”

“He sounds quite terrifying, if a boy of twenty-one can be terrifying,” Lucy said.

“You’re the one person, Lucy, he probably wouldn’t intimidate. He’s a fierce champion, incidentally, of women’s rights. Insists that in a true civilization the female sex would be absolutely independent of the bearded half
of humanity—and that only then would we see pure and free love.”

“Which probably means,” Lucy said, “that he has a girlfriend who dutifully darns his socks and gratefully kisses his toes.”

“And he’s to the
left
of Engel and Fischer,” Spies added. “He thinks they spend too much time talking about bombs and not enough time building them. Rumor has it that Louis Lingg’s created a veritable arsenal in his room.”

“Which isn’t, I trust, too close to here,” Lizzie chimed in.

“He boards on the North Side with a man named William Seliger and his wife,” Schwab said. “Both men belong to the Carpenters’ and Joiners’ Union.”

Five-year-old Albert Jr. suddenly burst into the room, bawling from a scary dream during his nap. Lucy jumped up to comfort him. Without breaking stride in the conversation, she put him on her lap and rocked him back and forth. “What do we know of Lingg’s background?” she asked. “Has it entered your heads that he might be an agent provocateur?” Albert Jr.’s whimpering began to subside.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Spies assured her. “We’re in touch with people who knew the whole Lingg family in Baden. He’s been a furious little rebel ever since his father, who worked in a lumber yard for years, had a disabling and ultimately fatal accident and the company denied his mother aid of any kind. She had to raise her two young children in extreme poverty, and the boy nursed a bitter hatred of existing society. Which has only grown with time.”

“I want my papa,” Albert Jr. suddenly sobbed. “I want my papa!”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” Lucy said, wrapping her arms around the boy and continuing to rock him gently in her lap. “Papa will be home very soon, I promise you. What is today, eh?”

“I don’t knooow,” the boy howled.

“Yes, you do. Today is Tuesday. Then comes Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday. And before the sun sets on Friday, Papa will be back home with you.”

“I want Papa.”

“Of course you do, sweetheart. This has been a long, long trip. We all miss Papa. But think of it!—just three more days, my brave boy, and he will be home.”

That seemed to comfort Albert Jr. He stopped sobbing and began to
doze in his mother’s arms.

“Have you been hearing regularly from Albert?” Spies asked.

“Yes,” Lucy said. “He knows how concerned we are for his safety and writes nearly every day. Though how he finds the time, I can’t imagine, since he goes from one meeting to the next. He must stay up half the night.”

“Did he go beyond Lemont?” Schwab asked in his reticent way.

“Albert goes where he’s called.” Lucy laughed. “On this trip alone, he’s been in Ohio, Missouri and Kansas. I can’t even remember all the towns. And somehow he manages to write me fifteen page letters.” Lucy reached above Albert Jr.’s head, momentarily jostling him awake, to retrieve a thick packet from the nearby table. “Here’s the most recent one.”

“May we hear some of it?” Spies asked.

“We’re going to publish it in full in the
Alarm
next week—all but the billing and cooing parts, of course. But I can read you a portion. I warn you,” she added, “most of it is pretty grim stuff.”

She unfolded the letter and read, “The Lemont stone quarry owners quickly broke the strike. It was swift and brutal. The militia opened fire directly on the assembled townspeople. They killed two men on the spot. Andrew Stulata, a popular young man in the village, was standing with both hands stretched out trying to hold a group of twenty-five or thirty children back from the street. A shot from the troops blew off the top of his head and his blood and brains scattered all over the little ones. A man named Jan—”

Lizzie abruptly rose from her chair. “Enough, Lucy, enough. I can’t hear any more,” her voice quavered.

Lucy quietly put the letter down.

“It’s pitiful,” Schwab said.

“The workers are too afraid to organize,” Lucy said. “There isn’t even a chapter of the Knights anywhere in the region.”

“They’re absolute pawns in the hands of the quarry owners,” Spies added.

“That’s not what Albert thinks,” Lucy responded stiffly. Albert Jr., now the quietest person in the room, slid out of his mother’s arms and wandered back to bed.

“What would you have these poor men do?” Spies asked in surprise. “The quarries are the only source of work in the area.”

Lucy started to pick up the letter from her lap, but Lizzie grabbed it out of her hand.

“I told you—I can’t hear any more.”

“Here’s a new Lizzie,” Lucy said stonily. “I’ve never known you to deny reality.” She folded her hands in front of her.

Lizzie blanched at the rebuke. “I’m sorry if … if I’ve disappointed you …” She was near tears again.

“The part I was about to read you,” Lucy said, “has nothing to do with horror. It shows Albert at his finest.” She sat erect and unmoving.

For a moment no one spoke. Then Lizzie stepped forward and put the letter back in Lucy’s lap. “I’d like to hear it,” she said softly.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lucy picked up the letter. “Very well … Albert is writing about a meeting called the day after the killings.”

“ ‘I spoke briefly at their meeting,’ ” Lucy read, “ ‘mostly about the need to organize. But several of the men angrily rebutted me, said that if they tried to organize, the bosses would starve them out. “Then you are slaves,” I said quietly. The men hung their heads. Several had tears in their eyes. Finally one of them said, “Alas, sir, it is too true.” But when a vote was finally taken, the men, to my surprise, did decide to strike. It was short-lived, just as my antagonists had predicted. The men had no power to back up their demands, and had to return to work on the quarry owners’ terms.’ ”

“So things are just as before in Lemont, or worse,” Lizzie said with a sigh.

“Not at all,” Lucy answered sharply. “The quarry workers now understand that next time they’ll need a stronger organization and a willingness to engage in the very lawless acts that the Knights and Terence V. Powderly caution them to avoid.”

Lucy snorted derisively. “Powderly’s goal is what he likes to call ‘class reconciliation.’ As if any such thing were possible.”

Schwab, usually somewhat timid, felt he had to defend Powderly. “I think he’s concerned that the imbalance of power between owners and workers is so great that few strikes can hope to succeed. It’s a point not easily refuted.”

“Nonsense!” Lucy cried out. “Assess the workers ten cents a week, build a strike fund so the men can afford to stay out, proclaim a general strike.”

“We have to remember,” Lizzie said, inadvertently throwing more coals on the fire, “that the average worker prefers caution to apocalyptic hellfire.”

“Most workers,” Spies added, “aren’t even willing to join unions, let alone be assessed. And what happens when an undernourished strike fund runs out? Or if nobody responds to the call for a general strike?” Spies knew the questions had no answers, but he was annoyed at what he considered Lucy’s glib militancy.

“Given the workers’ fear and reluctance,” Schwab said mournfully, “the odds in places like Lemont are too heavily stacked against us.”

“Nat Turner faced greater odds,” Lucy snapped. “That didn’t stop him.”

“But would you say, then, that Nat Turner succeeded?” Spies asked Lucy, with careful provocation.

“Black folks are free, aren’t they?” Lucy barked.

“I’m surprised you think so,” Spies replied.

“They’re not in slavery.” Lucy emphasized each word. “And they’ll achieve greater freedom still, once more of them recognize that their essential struggle revolves around class, not race. The outrages still leveled at the negro will cease on the day capitalism is defeated.”

Spies tried to modulate his incredulity. “Surely you, Lucy, of all people, know that racism has a history and a life of its own.”

“Me of all people? What can that possibly mean?”

Realizing he’d invaded a sanctum Lucy kept sealed, Spies glided off the point. “I mean, having grown up in Texas, having personally seen the depth of racial hatred. That heritage, I fear, will be with us even after class divisions no longer exist. Those of us in the American Group are among the few socialists or anarchists who seem to care about the negro’s plight.”

“You’re quite wrong,” Lucy snapped. “The Knights are making far greater strides in welcoming negroes into their ranks.”

“I’d say making some strides,” Schwab threw in. “Negroes are invited to form separate, not integrated, assemblies.” Schwab hoped to dampen down the undercurrent of hostility between Spies and Lucy. He had a strong need to believe that a commitment to socialism automatically created serene bonds of comradeship, and any evidence to the contrary made him deeply uncomfortable.

Lucy continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “And on this matter—and
only this—I give Terence Powderly considerable credit.”

“Powderly has also said,” Spies emphasized “that he doesn’t expect black people to be received into the homes of whites.”

“But he himself socializes freely with negroes,” Lucy shot back.

Annoyed that Lucy refused to yield an inch, Spies reminded her that T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York
Age
and the most prominent negro in the country, had himself lambasted the racism he found endemic in the Knights. “Not that I think,” Spies went on, “that the
IWPA
is doing much better. Just two weeks ago, a comrade much respected for his learning confided to me that lynching may be the only way to keep what he called the ‘nigger brutes’ in line in the South!”

“I don’t wish to talk any further about the subject of race,” Lucy announced. “The comrades are not where they should be on the issue. Nor are negroes where they should be in regard to the class struggle.” Her voice was frigid. “You’re entitled to your opinions. Let us leave it at that.” Soon after, Spies and Schwab took their leave, but Lizzie lingered behind. Lucy busied herself with clearing off the table, not having entirely forgiven what she felt had been Lizzie’s earlier sentimentality.

“Albert’s energy is a wondrous thing,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, it is,” Lucy curtly replied.

“Lucy, there’s … there’s something I need to say,” Lizzie hesitantly offered.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Lucy said, continuing to wipe down the table. “You should always speak your mind with me. I know you as a thoroughly truthful woman and that is what you were tonight.”