by Charles Egan
Carew pointed at Luke.
‘There’s one. Scab labour at the weigh station.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ Ned asked.
‘Enforcers for the Union. And, by God, you will respect the Union.’
He whipped out his gun and pointed it at Ned.
‘Let’s see your fingernails.’
The black grime under the nails was obvious.
‘More scab labour.’
Luke was about to protest, but at that moment, two more men entered. They were both carrying clubs.
‘In the name of God,’ Ned said, ‘is there any call for this?’
‘Yes,’ Carew said. ‘A strike has been called, and you’ve refused to recognise it.’
He spun the cylinder on the gun.
‘But damn it to hell,’ Luke said, ‘after seven weeks’ starvation…’
‘It’s not for you to reason why. John Bates has his reasons, and you don’t question them.’
‘So it’s back to starvation, is it? We can’t…’
Carew’s face contorted with anger.
‘I’ve warned you twice already.’
He pointed the gun at Luke’s head and pulled the trigger. There was a loud click. Winnie screamed. Luke staggered, only slowly realising what had happened. He touched the side of his head, but there was no wound and no blood.
‘And that’s only to show you what’ll happen to you the next time,’ Carew said. ‘From now on, all the chambers will be loaded.’
He left, followed by the other men.
Luke was convulsing violently. Winnie was crying, Ellen’s arms around her.
‘Stay easy, Luke,’ Ned said, grasping him by the arm.
‘I’m sorry, Ned,’ Luke stuttered. ‘For a second, I thought…’
‘I know what you thought. So did I.’
He sat Luke down.
‘The real question in my mind is how many others have been visited? What’s going to happen tomorrow?’
‘Well, they can’t have visited everyone,’ Ellen said.
‘Let’s wait and see,’ Luke said, stammering. ‘I’m damned if I want to risk my life, and I’ll tell you something, that game with the gun frightened the hell out of me. Were there any bullets in it?’
‘I didn’t see,’ Ned said. ‘I wasn’t looking too close.’
‘Well, neither was I. We don’t even know if I could have been killed. But I’ll tell you this, Ned, I’m not going to go back to work, I don’t know about you?’
‘How will we know what’s happening though?’ Ned asked.
Luke held his head in his hands.
‘There’s nothing to stop us going down towards the mine, see what’s happening in the morning. We’ll stay well back, though.’
Slowly, the convulsions faded.
*
When they went to bed, Winnie was crying.
‘Luke, this can’t go on. We’ve no money, and no food.’
‘I know,’ Luke said, ‘and the only way we can get by is by getting more credit through the truck store, and you know where that leads. And they sure as hell won’t give us money to be sending back to Mayo.’
‘Mayo? I wonder if they’re alive or dead.’
‘God only knows.’
‘Perhaps we should leave this accursed place,’ she said, with vehemence.
‘And go where?’
‘Anywhere. Get you back on the railways?’
‘There’s damned little work on the railways,’ Luke said. ‘Isn’t that why we’re here, digging coal instead of building railways.’
‘I wonder how Murtybeg is doing. Would there be work back with him?’
‘There might,’ Luke said. ‘And to be honest, I’d take that work if I had a chance, and to hell with the rights or wrongs of it. But we don’t have that choice any longer, do we?’
‘Why not?’
‘In God’s name, Winnie, where would we get the money to cross the Atlantic?’
‘But damn it Luke, we’re starving. And I’ll tell you this, neither the Ryans nor the Gallaghers ever starved in Ireland. You always had enough work as a clerk on the Relief Works. Pat too. Your father and my father too. You all had work, and little as it was, it was paid work. And here, what do we have? A strike. No pay from the Operators, and nothing from the Union neither. Why were ye all paying Union dues? Can you tell me that?’
*
The next morning, Luke and Ned walked out towards the mine. There was a group of men in front of the mine entrance and the breaker, a hundred or more, Luke estimated. Every one of them were carrying cudgels, and Luke saw that some of them were also carrying guns. Enforcers! Carew was there.
To the side were a group of police; chatting to each other and smoking pipes. They clearly had no interest in what was happening in front of them.
Luke and Ned stayed well back.
A large number of miners had gathered in front of the enforcers. For a long time, there was silence. Then Carew raised a gun in the air, and let off a single shot. There was a roar from the enforcers as they charged forward, whipping wildly at the miners in their path. The miners broke and ran. Still the police did nothing.
Many men had fallen, and the enforcers strode between them, whipping at everyone who moved.
‘Nothing we can do,’ Ned said. ‘Let’s go home.’
They described the bloody scenes to Winnie and Ellen.
‘This is impossible,’ Winnie said. ‘They’re worse than Lucan’s tumblers. Good God, we called him the Exterminator. What do we call these bastards?’
‘Enforcers,’ Ned said.
‘Not a word I’d heard before,’ Ellen said.
‘Simple enough,’ Luke said. ‘It’s American for Exterminator.’
*
That night, Winnie went upstairs to feed Liam. Then there was a knock on the door. Luke and Ned stared at each other.
‘In the name of God, who is it this time?’ Ned asked.
‘Let’s see,’ Luke said.
He went to the door.
‘Who is it?’ he shouted.
‘Mick O’Brien.’
Luke opened the door.
‘Any news?’
‘They’ve decided to leave the battleground to us,’ Mick said.
‘What!’
‘They’ve withdrawn the enforcers to the edge of the mine. They’re setting up tents there, so now they’re letting us take away our injured and dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Only one, to be honest, but isn’t it enough?’
Luke and Ned put on their caps and lit their lamps.
Winnie had come down stairs. ‘What is it Luke?’
We’re just bringing our injured back. That’s all. Now you stay with Ellen, and don’t worry about us.’
‘No, Luke. No.’
‘It’s alright,’ O’Brien said. ‘They’re well back. They’re letting us take our wounded out. They’re not going to attack us.’
‘But…if they do.’
‘They won’t.’
Winnie was still doubtful.
‘Watch for the guns, Luke.’
‘We will.’
At the edge of the mine was something Luke had never expected to see in the United States – dozens of miners’ lamps in the dark, moving forward and back through the area where the charge had taken place.
One man came over to them. ‘Be careful, and don’t vex the bastards. They’re well and truly armed. Now, can you take an injured man in for tonight?’
‘We can,’ Ned said. ‘That’s not to say that we’ll be able to feed him.’
‘Arra, sure I know that. But at least you’ll be able to clean his wounds.’
He showed them a man lying on the ground.
‘This fellow, he’s from up the Miner’s House. They’re all crowded out tonight. We can’t leave him here though. God only knows what the bastards would do to him in the morning.’
Luke and Ned edged the man up into a standing position. He was groaning feebly, only
half aware of anything. In the dim lamplight, Luke saw the blood on his face. Carefully, they walked him forward, stumbling as they tried to avoid the other wounded. At length, they reached the house.
Ellen answered to their knock.
‘Quick. Bring him in.’
She laid towels on the floor, and Luke and Ned eased the man down onto it. Ellen stuffed a folded jacket under his head. Already, Winnie was heating the water.
A few minutes later, Ellen gently washed his wound.
‘We’ll need bandages,’ she said.
‘Don’t I know it,’ Winnie said. She produced a section of shirt-material.
‘That’s just what we need,’ Ellen said. She took it from Winnie, ripping it sharply, and started to wrap it around the man’s head.
Sometime later, the man was fully conscious.
‘Where am I,’ he asked in Irish.
Luke recognised the accent as Mayo. ‘In a Mayo house, beside the mines,’ he answered.
‘There’s a pain in my head.’
‘That was from the smack on the head they gave you. The enforcers, may God damn them to hell.’
‘Ah yes,’ the man replied.’ I remember now. It was a hard battle.’
‘It was. They’re violent men.’
Blood oozed through the dressing.
‘Over here, Ellen.’
Ellen ripped more shirt material and brought it over.
‘It was a hard blow,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think your skull is cracked. Enough to knock you out cold, but no worse than that.’
Carefully, they eased him up from the ground and brought him into Ned and Ellen’s bedroom.
‘But I can’t be taking a bed,’ the man protested.
‘Arra, don’t you be worrying,’ Ned said, ‘there’s many the night we slept on the floor back in Mayo.’
As Luke threw a blanket over him, the man grasped his hand.
‘Dara O’Gachain is the name to me,’ he said.
‘Luke and Winnie are the names to us,’ Luke told him. ‘Ned and Ellen here are the man and woman of the house.’
Next morning, Dara was sitting at their table, spooning porridge.
‘Will you have family worried?’ Luke asked.
‘Not in America,’ Dara answered. ‘’Tis the Miners’ House I’m staying in.’
‘And a Mayo man too,’ Ned said.
‘Indeed. Erris. A little village you would not know. Torán is the name to it.’
Torán Luke thought. Conaire was from Torán.
‘There were evictions there,’ he said.
‘There were,’ Dara said, ‘but I’d left before that. I thought my family were all secure, and I leaving. A Catholic landlord. But you can’t trust any of them. It was a desperate thing.’
‘So I’d heard,’ Luke said, ‘but you left before it, you say? Straight to America, was it?’
‘Through Quebec,’ Dara said. ‘I worked a winter on the Gatineau forests.’
‘’47, was it?’ Luke asked.
‘It was.’
‘You’d know Conaire Ó Coisteala then? He was a Torán man on the Gatineau in ’47.’
Dara looked at him in surprise. For a long time, he was silent.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I knew Conaire well. We played together as children in Torán.’
‘But is he still living?’ Luke asked. ‘That’s my question.’
Dara shook his head; tears in his eyes.
‘You knew him, then?’ he asked, without replying to the question.
‘Indeed,’ Luke said. ‘I crossed the Atlantic with him on the Centaurus. A hard ship it was too.’
‘I’d heard of the Centaurus,’ Dara said. ‘I was on one a week after. It was only in the forest that I met up with the other Torán men. It was a hard winter too, working down on the wharves on the river. But there were six of us, all from home, and that made it easier.’
‘And then?’ Luke asked.
‘Then we went off on a river drive to Quebec, driving the great rafts of logs. We fell in with a bunch of Munster men, and that was our undoing. There was a riot, and Conaire was stabbed in the neck. When the riot was over, we brought him back on the raft, and so to Trois Rivières and buried him there.’
That afternoon, they made up a rough stretcher from branches and carried Dara back to the Miners’ House. Afterwards, Luke thought of writing a letter to John Costello in New York, to explain how Conaire had died. But postage was expensive. In any case, Costello would know, from length of time, that Conaire was dead. Why add to his grief by telling him how?
*
Silence in the mines. The enforcers still occupied the tents in front of the mines, the weigh stations and the breakers. The hunger deepened. Their debts at the truck store increased, and still no money to send to Mayo. Luke felt he should write, but the cost of a stamp was beyond him now. In some ways, it was as well not to. He could only lie about America. Famine in Pennsylvania! No-one in Carrigard would believe that.
All through the long days, they continued stitching shirts. By now, Ned was worried about eviction. They had not paid rent on the house in weeks. Then one day, when Luke was at the truck store with Ned, the clerk demanded to know the address they were living in. When Ned responded, the clerk checked through a ledger.
‘Let’s see. Edward Moran two dollars fifty a week rental. Six weeks unpaid. Fifteen dollars outstanding. Pay cash?’
‘I don’t have cash,’ Ned said.
‘Sign here for a further fifteen dollars’ credit.’
Ned signed.
‘Luke Ryan, a dollar seventy-five a week, by six weeks, ten dollars fifty outstanding. Sign here.’
Luke signed.
As they walked away, he kicked at a lump of slate.
‘Damn them all to hell.’
‘Sure what difference does it make?’ Ned asked. ‘We’ll never repay it anyhow.’
On the way home, Luke and Ned decided to call in at the Miner’s House. Farrelly and Kilgallon were playing cards, broken pieces of half burnt matches in the kitty.
‘We have to use something for money, when you’ve nothing else,’ Jack said.
Luke laughed. ‘I suppose it keeps you engaged.’
Mick O’Brien had just woken up. He came across and sat at the table.
‘So what’s with the bold Luke? Any great news?’
‘Not a lot, apart from the fact that they’re adding our rent onto our debt at the truck shop.’
‘Sure I know that,’ Mick said, ‘they’re doing that to all of us. But how’s Winnie and the child?’
‘Hungry.’
‘Silly question,’ Jack said. ‘But tell us this Luke, we’d been arguing earlier about the Union. What do you think this strike is about?’
‘Damned if I know. I can understand a strike for higher wages, or an end to scrip. But sure we’ve got all those. Lien too. The devil take me, but I can’t see any reason.’
‘I’d agree with you,’ Farrelly said, ‘but the story that’s coming back from the Union is that they’re striking so as to stop production, and keep prices high in Philadelphia and New York.’
‘Well, isn’t that what the Operators said about the lockout?’ Ned asked.
‘Exactly,’ Mick said. ‘So whose side is the Union on?’
Luke sat down on the bunk beside O’Brien.
‘Another thing that’s been occurring to me,’ he said, ‘what about all this strike pay we’re supposed to get?’
‘Yes,’ Farrelly said, ‘we were wondering the same. They’re quick enough taking our Union dues from us, ten cents a week, every week. There’s not a penny of them come back, you know that?’
‘Not that I’ve seen anyhow,’ Luke said.
Jack had dealt the cards again, four hands now, but no-one took up their cards.
‘I don’t know what this Bates fellow is up to,’ Jack said, ‘but either he’s a fool or a scoundrel.’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt to the answer to that one,’
Mick said. ‘A fellow on fifteen dollars a week…’
‘Fifteen dollars,’ Ned echoed.
‘Isn’t that what I’m saying?’ Mick said. ‘That’s what the chairman of the Union gets. John Bates Esquire, worth three times as much as any man in this room, and that’ll tell you where your Union subscriptions are going. There’s only one way I can see of explaining Bates. He’s an English man. More than half the miners here are Irish, whether it’s Mayo or Kilkenny, it doesn’t matter, and Bates has come over from England too. It’s the government there, they’re not content with starving us in Ireland, they want to starve us here too.’
Luke spoke about it as he and Ned walked back to the house.
‘I’m not so sure I’d believe that bit about the English sending Bates over to starve us here. What do you think?’
‘Total nonsense,’ Ned said. ‘There’s only one puzzle though. If it’s not that, then what in hell is he trying to do?’
*
Weeks later, there was a knock on the door. It was early on a Monday morning. Again, it was Mick O’Brien.
‘They’ve gone!’
‘Who?’
‘The tents. They’re all gone.’
Luke looked up the hill to the mine.
‘Well, the cute hoors,’ he said to Ned. ‘They struck their tents and stole away in the night.’
‘What now?’ Ned asked.
His question was answered by a piercing whistle.
‘Time for work,’ Luke said.
Not knowing what his job now was, he went to the weigh station. Cantwell greeted him back.
That evening, Luke and Ned went to the Hibernian Club. Mick and Jack were already there. No one was drinking. Mick waved at them to sit.
‘Well, what do you think of it now, Luke?’
‘I’m still puzzled. They’ve called off the strike, we’ve no idea why it was called in the first place, and we’ve received no benefit from it.’
‘They were just trying to starve us,’ Mick said.
‘Why on earth would they want to do that?’
‘It forces us to increase our credit at the truck shop. The higher our credit goes, the more we’re tied into the Operator, the more trapped we are. And if Bates wasn’t working for the fellows in London, then the only other possibility is that he’s working for the Operators.’
‘You might have something there,’ Luke said. ‘I’d almost believe that.’
