The Anarchist (34 page)

They stared out at the canal for more than half an hour. Savin didn’t move, didn’t even light a cigarette. Finally he said to the policeman, “Cullen, you walk that way a bit, and see if anything’s coming down toward the harbor.”

Cullen stepped out of the alley and walked north.

Savin took his pocket watch from his vest and opened it. “A little after one.”

“They’ve been on time before,” Hyde said.

“And how many of them are there?”

“Bruener, his son, and Gimmel. Anton. And Norris and the other Pinkerton.”

Savin snapped the watch closed and tucked it back in his vest pocket. They stared out at the fog. After about ten minutes a dog came along, sniffing. When it saw them in the alley it turned around and ran off.

A few minutes later they heard footsteps and Cullen appeared out of the fog. “It’s up there, sir.” He was a large man with a handlebar mustache. “Several hundred yards, just after a bend where there’s a slaughterhouse. Didn’t see nobody, though, and the cabin’s dark.”

“All right.” Savin stepped out in the alley and began walking north. Hyde and Cullen followed, and the footsteps of the other policemen could be heard across the water. They moved through the fog without speaking until they reached the bend in the canal, where Savin stopped. “Hate the smell of pigs,” he said. Looking back toward the others, he said, “Quietly now,” and then he led them past the sty, where pigs could be heard grunting and rooting around in the mud and rubbing themselves against slats in the fence.

When they came in sight of the
Glockenspiel
, they stopped, and Hyde said, “Strange, I don’t see the mules. They should be ready to tow.”

Savin said, “Where are Norris and Feeney?”

“Kept forward, up in the bow.”

Savin watched the barge for a moment and then said, “You go ahead.”

Hyde didn’t move.

“You heard me,” Savin said. “You go on aboard. See if you can get them to come up top—tell them something, something wrong with the hull.”

Hyde glanced at Cullen but the policeman wouldn’t return his stare.

“You have no choice,” Savin said. “It’s not a matter of trust. You have no choice—you promised the girl. Besides, I would like Gimmel alive.” Hyde looked toward several policemen, who were lying on the ground, their rifles aimed at the barge. “We won’t fire,” Savin said, “unless they fire first.”

Hyde started to walk toward the barge. There was no movement, no sound, no light on board. He could not see any of the policemen on the far side of the canal. He went down the plank to the deck and moved toward the pilothouse. Someone should have been on watch, but there was no one in sight. Below, the lanterns weren’t lit in the cabin. It could be that Gimmel and Bruener knew he was bringing the police and were just waiting for him.

“Bruener,” he said quietly. “Gimmel.”

There was no sound from below.

Hyde moved to the top of the companionway, leaned over, and looked down into the dark cabin. Then he heard something from up near the bow. He went out on the deck and walked forward. And then he saw Anton, lying curled up on his side next to an open hatch. A marlin spike—a large wooden needle used to splice rope—was buried in the side of his skull, and the fingers of his right hand twitched as though trying to grasp something.

“Where are they, Anton?”

Anton coughed, and then he whispered something that Hyde couldn’t understand.

“What? English. Speak English, Anton.”

“Awe-burr.”

Hyde could hear the sound of a carriage moving along the towpath. “Motka, she’s here. Do you want to see her?”

Briefly one eyelid rolled up.

“What happened? Where did they go?”

Anton’s eye closed and his hand stopped twitching as his body flattened out on the deck.

There was the sound of footsteps and Savin came to the top of the berm, accompanied by Cullen. Behind them, Hyde could see Motka as she was being restrained by two policemen.
“Anton,”
she cried, and then she spoke furiously in Russian to the men holding her.

Hyde went back up the plank, but Cullen stood in the way when he tried to approach Savin. “They killed him,” Hyde said. “He was no anarchist, Savin.” He tried to get around Cullen, but the policeman grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back.

“You lost them, Hyde,” Savin said. “I brought you down here.”

Savin looked at his men who were holding Motka. “Take her back to the carriage.”

She screamed as they dragged her back along the towpath.

Hyde moved toward Savin again, and when Cullen stood in his way Hyde shoved him. The sergeant drew his revolver and took aim at Hyde’s chest.

“Cullen,”
Savin said, and after a moment the policeman lowered his gun. “Have your men take care of that, Cullen.” He looked down at the barge. “I still don’t have my Pinkertons, do I, Hyde? I bought her, so I get to keep her.” He walked along the towpath toward the waiting carriage.

THEY had been traveling for hours over country roads. Norris’s back ached, but at least his hands were now bound in front of him and his head wasn’t covered. It was night, raining, and they were sitting in the back of a milk wagon. All he could see was the dull glint of metal canisters, knocking against each other with dull bell tones. There was an awful smell: milk.

“We’ve been traveling all night,” Feeney said. “We must be well out of Buffalo. That sound—the sound of milk sloshing in them canisters, it’s gonna give me the squirty shits.”

The wagon wheels banged over rough road, and the horses—
there were two sets of hooves—plodded on with determination. “I hate milk,” Norris said.

He could barely see Bruener, slumped on a milk canister, his head lolling back against the wall as he snored. Gimmel was seated on a wood crate—the one that contained the sticks of dynamite—and his head was turned away as he stared out the one small window in the rear door of the wagon.

They were running. They were running because of Moses Hyde, and they realized they couldn’t stay on the barge any longer. Despite rain drumming on the deck overhead, Norris had been able to hear Gimmel and Bruener arguing—mostly in German—in the cabin. Then someone came into the berth and removed the sack from Norris’s head. He was staring up at Anton, who looked as though he wanted to divulge a secret, but he couldn’t find the words, and it made him look nervous and remorseful. Then he began to cut the rope binding their hands. “We climb out one of the forward hatches,” he whispered.

“What’s happened back there?” Norris asked.

“Gimmel’s very mad. Hyde was sent to police to make a deal for you and—”

“Hyde?” “Yes.”

“Good,” Norris said.

“You know him?” Anton asked.

“I know Moses Hyde.”

“He is not returned,” Anton said. “Gimmel says he’s been arrested or maybe paid off, and he will bring the police. So we must leave the canal now. So this is your best chance, while the rain is hard.” Anton opened the door and led them into the hold. He opened one of the hatches and climbed up into the pouring rain. Norris and Feeney followed, and when they were all on the deck the boy Josef stepped out of the pilothouse, holding a pistol. Norris, Anton, and Feeney raised their hands.

Josef stamped his foot on the deck. Gimmel and Bruener came out of the pilothouse. Gimmel also had a pistol. He said
something in German, and Bruener walked toward Anton, pulling something long and thin from his pocket—a marlin spike. Bruener raised his arm and brought it down swiftly, burying the marlin spike deep in the side of Anton’s head, dropping him to the deck.

In the distance they could hear the sound of horses and a wagon coming along the towpath. Bruener tied Norris’s and Feeney’s hands again, and then they were taken off the barge. Anton still lay writhing on the deck in the pouring rain.

Now the milk wagon stopped and immediately there was the sound of horse piss striking packed dirt. Bruener opened the door and fresh, cool air filled the wagon. It was a moonless night, but Norris could see across a cornfield to a stand of woods.

“We’ll wait here,” Gimmel said.

They all got out and everyone pissed in the dark.

“You’re running,” Norris said.

Gimmel buttoned himself up. “I am always running.”

“They are tracking down anarchists everywhere. They’re throwing them in jail. In some places they’re lynching them.”

“For every one they kill, two will take his place.” Gimmel took a flask from his coat pocket and tipped it up to his mouth. The smell of whiskey seemed to cauterize the sour smell of milk in Norris’s nostrils. “You think I was sent here to perpetrate an isolated act?” Gimmel asked. “No, we must take full advantage of the situation Czolgosz has created. In the next week there will be bombs elsewhere—all over the country. It’s our responsibility to provide the spark.” He unlocked the crate that he’d been sitting on, opened the lid, and took out a stick of dynamite. “We’ll let them know what we think of their notion of justice.”

“Where?” Norris asked. “Out here? No, Gimmel, you’ve been chased out of Buffalo, where you might have blown something up, but now you’re running. You’ve failed.”

“Norris, your concept of failure and success—they are meaningless. What you don’t have is the
attentat
, the deed—you lack conviction.”

“I have plenty of conviction. People like you give it to me.”

Gimmel put the stick of dynamite back in the crate and shut the lid. “No, you don’t, really. Mine began years ago. When I was young I read Johann Most’s pamphlets on revolutionary war science. It was a handbook on nitroglycerine, dynamite, gun cotton, fulminate of mercury. He called explosives the ‘proletariat’s artillery.’ Dynamite is the great equalizer. But you know who really taught me how to make a bomb? Louis Lingg. His stature, it was incredible. People said they’d never seen such a strong, handsome man. The day of the Haymarket riot, Lingg and another carpenter named Seliger spent hours putting bombs together. I was still in my teens—and I helped. Lingg treated me like a younger brother—we all believed we were going to die soon, together. He spoke little English but he liked to call me ‘Galoot.’ When they were all put on trial, they tried to prove that it was Lingg who actually threw the bomb that killed all those policemen. But it wasn’t Lingg. It was the Galoot. I threw that bomb. I threw that bomb, and my only regret is that I was not tried with Spies and Parsons and the others. The eloquence of those men—their speeches defended the workers’ rights and the role of anarchism. Parsons’s speech went on for two days! That fool judge allowed them to speak because he knew they were going to hang.” He took a last pull on his flask, and then tucked it back inside his coat.

“But Lingg,” Norris said. “He didn’t hang.”

“That’s right,” Gimmel said. “During the trial they found bombs in Lingg’s cell, and they could never determine how they got there. The newspapers called him the ‘anarchist tiger.’ But just before they were all sentenced to death, Lingg was killed by an exploding cap that was hidden inside a cigar.”

“I remember,” Norris said. “He wasn’t killed immediately.”

“In Chicago people said it was the police, it was their form of revenge, and Lingg lay in a hospital, his face blown open, dying, unable to speak. But it was another anarchist, Dyer Lum. I helped him put the cap in the cigar, and then during a visit
at the police station he managed to pass it to Lingg. And you know why?”

“It’s what Lingg wanted,” Norris said.

“He was too dignified to hang,” Gimmel said as he took out the whiskey bottle again. “None of the four men they hung—Spies, Parsons, Engel, Fischer—not one of them died of a broken neck. They all strangled. It took more than seven minutes for all of them to die. For Lingg, hanging would have been a disgrace. And it’s the same for Czolgosz. He deserves to die honorably, not in some electric chair.” Gimmel tipped the bottle to his mouth.

“Martyred.”

“Czolgosz knows his role. Anything to inspire others.”

There was the sound of a horse approaching and they both looked toward the first light rising beyond the trees. A boy riding bareback was coming down the dirt road toward the milk wagon. He pulled up on the reins and said something in German to Bruener.

“So what are you going to do?” Norris asked.

“Keep going.” Gimmel gestured toward the wagon. “Be patient. Wait.”