Spindle City

by Jotham Burrello

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “The meek shall not inherit the earth.”

  Joseph fixed on a woman with red markings on her forehead and ears. Sarah explained that she dyed red yarn without proper clothes. “The heat in the rooms makes for wicked perspiration. Their faces get marked wiping the sweat, but the real damage is here,” she said, thumping her chest.

  He said sarcastically, “I think choir practice is about over.”

  “But I’m just heading to the pulpit.” Sarah winked at Joseph.

  He crossed his arms so as not to strangle her.

  A middle-aged woman was dealing out coins to a bread peddler. She could barely pick them up with her twisted fingers. To be heard, the man shouted the price into her ear.

  Sarah approached the woman and helped her count the coins so she wasn’t cheated. Watching the scene, Joseph determined she had a good heart but a sick brain. She turned back, jabbing her finger in the air. “Your machines are killing them slowly. The deafening machines take their hearing; their eyes go inspecting cloth.”

  Joseph chopped her arm away from his face and continued to walk. He stopped outside a building on a dusty corner lot. Joseph recognized Father James Curley, Mary Sheehan’s priest at Saints Peter and Paul, distributing fruit from a parish cart. During the 1904 strike he’d sided with the operatives.

  “This way,” Sarah said, ducking into the apartment doorway. “We can talk in my rooms.” She explained that she’d chosen a building occupied by a mix of French-Canadians, Poles, and Italians, though they were still separated by floor. They stopped on the first landing, waiting for a group of four adults and six children, two families, to unlock a door. The boys carried picnic baskets. Joseph’s foot slid across the stair. The embedded grime was as slippery as the oil-soaked pine floors in the mill. The men said hello to Sarah, and she replied in French. The boys eyed Joseph suspiciously. “Ten people in three rooms,” she whispered as they passed. “The children speak little English. No schooling.”

  The next apartment door swung open to a very pregnant woman sipping a glass of water. Her two children lunged at Joseph, dragging him into her single room. The children’s hold weakened as Sarah spoke. “Il n’est pas le docteur. Je vais envoyer Missy en bas. Nous aiderons.”

  “Any minute now.” Sarah gave the woman a thumbs-up. “They thought you were the doctor.”

  “The father?”

  “Works in the dye room.”

  “Someone should fetch him.”

  “In Bangor we nursed pregnant girls.”

  “Girls?”

  “Abused by their bosses. When they announce they’re pregnant, they get dumped, and blackballed. The men already have families.” Sarah stopped on the stairs. For the first time all day her tone softened. “That’s my aunt’s story. But she tried her luck with the abortionist and lost.”

  The next floor was Italian. The landing smelled of urine. Sarah, of course, knew the story. “Enrico came home drunk last night and Concetta locked him out. When he tired of banging, he pissed on the door.”

  There were three doors, all open in search of a cross-breeze. A woman sat nursing an infant, her swollen breast hanging out for all to see. Her olive-skinned neighbor stood bare-chested except for the suspenders supporting his trousers, fiddling with the spring motor of a battered phonograph; his wife stood over a washboard in a closet sink. Behind door number three a sewing machine sat in the middle of the room. Two youngsters—no more than six, Joseph guessed—wrestled over a blackened ball on the rag rug beneath the machine. The smaller of the two, painfully thin. Their mother straddled the windowsill; she sucked a cigarette and exhaled through her nose. She wore a calico house gown, obviously homespun, the fabric bunched in her lap. She caught Joseph staring at her thigh and smiled.

  There was one door at the top landing—the attic apartment. Sarah tapped the door and walked in. “Those are the pens your peers condemn their workers to. It’s a cycle of poverty that few can claw out of.”

  Joseph paused on the threshold. The setting sun overwhelmed the space and his vision, but the air smelled of a workroom, of ink and paper, more than a ladies’ quarters. Two single beds were pushed together in the center of the room. There was one dark wood chest of drawers with a yellowing mirror. A wooden pole wedged between two corner walls served as a closet. Surprisingly, there was a washroom with decent light and working plumbing; it housed a sink and toilet. There was no kitchen, just a closet sink and washboard. Three geraniums in moss-covered pots sat on the unpainted windowsill, their green tendrils snaking down it and across the floor. The plants gave off a tinny odor that Joseph could taste.

  A young blond woman sat at a round table in the corner of the room. She hunched over an open journal scribbling lines of numbers with a yellow pencil. The table was cluttered with posters, papers, ink stamps, and books. An Egyptian brand cigarette burned in a clamshell ashtray. She didn’t even glance up at Joseph. It was as if she’d expected him. Above the table hung a photograph of labor crusader Jennie Collins addressing women operatives. Joseph recognized the Gower Mill in the background. There was a handwritten caption across the bottom of the photo: A strike requires courage to face starvation for the sake of justice. The traitorous behavior of a few shall not defeat the purpose of the many.

  The younger woman finished her writing, closed the journal, and jumped to her feet. She took a drag from the cigarette and shot Sarah a glance. She wore men’s trousers and a white cotton blouse; a gold pinkie ring, similar to the one Sarah wore, dangled from a silver chain around her neck. She turned to Joseph and looked him and up and down. Exhaling gray smoke through her nose, she said, “I thought you’d be taller.”

  “And you are?”

  “Missy.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Missy.”

  “Oh, I’m not disappointed, Mr. Bartlett.” Missy set the cigarette in the clamshell. “Sarah has been looking forward to meeting you.”

  “I bet she has.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Sarah motioned Missy behind a tall blind. The fabric panels were embroidered with peacocks standing on mangrove branches; yellow and white fish swam beneath them. Joseph heard the women whispering. He flipped through the books on the table. There was Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Progress and Poverty, and other socialist-loving garbage. Among the trove of papers, he spotted a month-by-month forecast from the New York futures cotton market and a slip noting the price of printcloth. Another paper predicted a bumper cotton crop for 1912. Nothing too difficult to get, but why would she study it? For the same reason he had when he’d found out about Stanton’s nefarious bookkeeping: to see if the owners were keeping two sets of books—one for themselves, and one to show the operatives. When the agents could show that the price of production exceeded the price of their goods, wage cuts could be justified. Perhaps he’d underestimated this Sarah Strong. A newspaper clipping taped to the wall quoted a suffragist’s speech at the recent New York State Fair. The phrases “by any means necessary” and “to the death” caught his eye.

  Missy stepped out from behind the blind, holding a tray with a washbasin, towels, and a blue porcelain teacup.

  “Call me when she’s crowning,” Sarah said.

  “Door,” Missy said to Joseph, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Where are my manners.” He held it open. “How will we get on without you.”

  “You’re really much shorter than I imagined.”

  “You two should have an act in the circus,” Sarah said.

  Missy winked at Joseph. “Come find me when she’s done.”

  “Don’t forget this.” Sarah shook a tall mason jar of dried straw. She set it on the tray and kissed Missy full on the mouth. Missy trotted down the stairs. She called, “Coming, Mrs. Chevalier.”

  Joseph shut the door. “What’s the straw for?”

  “Leave it open,” Sarah sai
d. “It’s dried poppy straw to make tea. Helps with the pain.”

  Joseph whistled.

  “Do you know the mortality rate for babies born in a slum?”

  “I bet you’re gonna tell me.”

  “I overestimated you, Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Time for my countdown. Five minutes to make your proposal, after which I am leaving. And you can scream rape or bloody murder, but I am leaving.” Joseph reached for his pocket watch. He checked the opposite vest pocket. He shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”

  Sarah laughed. “The man in the red vest.”

  “You know the scoundrel?”

  “Just recently. He’s an abortionist.”

  “Isn’t that poetic, a pickpocketing abortionist. If I wasn’t so cross, I might laugh at the absurdity of it.” He couldn’t wait to tell Mary—she would make sense of this. “Four minutes.”

  Suddenly Verdi’s opera La Traviata filled the building. The Italian had fixed the phonograph.

  Sarah went behind the blind. “Fitting performance for this neighborhood?”

  “How so?”

  “It ends in death.” Sarah tossed her blouse, skirt, corset, and garter belt over the top of the blind.

  “Ms. Strong, if you please.”

  “Relax, Mr. Bartlett,” she called. “You’re not my flavor.”

  She emerged wearing a pair of men’s denim jeans, khaki safari shirt, and black leather boots. She brushed past Joseph, muttering “Time to work,” and hovered over the top banister. “Anything, Missy?”

  “Nothing,” Missy shouted back.

  Sarah bustled passed him, cradled the still-burning cigarette, and took a long drag. She leaned her head back and exhaled a thick cyclone of gray smoke.

  “Bastard owners exploit workers in Fall River. This isn’t news,” Joseph said. “I can do nothing to change it.”

  “What can you tell me about George Pierce?” She snubbed out the butt.

  “Unskilled workers weaken his bargaining position. He won’t talk to you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Sarah stacked the papers on the desk. “I have nothing on you, Mr. Bartlett. But this is your town, not mine. Your citizens dying. Not mine. Remember that.”

  “You have no idea what I have done for this city.”

  “Here or Lawrence, we’ll organize unskilled operatives to protest for a wage hike and shorter hours.”

  “And get folks killed, like in Bangor? Is that your aim?”

  “And the owners will lock them out, call out the militia, and then hire scabs. But my plan is to enlist mill agents sympathetic to labor to publicly support the strikers. Newspaper tours of your mill will follow. Open your books. It will put pressure on the others to follow suit. Improving the conditions of all workers, not just Cleveland operatives, will be your legacy, Joseph Bartlett.”

  The unions had tried the same strategy of divide and conquer in 1904, and it had failed. Was she so naive? Had she really no idea of the owners’ power? Cleveland printcloth couldn’t be given away to the Salvation Army if he aligned with her. And the city’s greatest capitalist—a man who once said, “I believe in the accumulation of wealth without any limit”—Joseph’s mentor, Matt Borden, would disown him. There was one thing Joseph would put above an operative’s welfare: his family. He doubted Karl Marx himself could talk sense into the silly woman.

  Sarah placed a gold ring on table. “Wear this in solidarity.”

  “You’re crazy.” He tasted bile in the back of his throat. “I do all I can.”

  “Nonsense!” She slammed down the papers; the ring skittered across the floor.

  “You bring guns and dynamite into Fall River, and they’ll hunt you down.”

  “You and I have seen it all, Mr. Bartlett. But the difference is I’ve seen enough.”

  The chant, “baby! baby!” blew up the stairwell. Sarah shoved Joseph into the doorjamb and vaulted down the stairs.

  The first-floor landing was crowded with the extended French family rubbernecking into the apartment. They parted so Joseph could enter; it smelled faintly of blood and cigarette ash. The red blind was lowered on the hood to block the setting sun. The air sparkled with floating dust. Mrs. Chevalier lay splayed on a blanket in the middle of the floor; Missy knelt behind her, holding up her head and shoulders. The two small Chevalier children, a boy and girl of perhaps four and six, crouched under the kitchen table.

  “Une pression supplémentaire,” Missy said.

  “You’re witnessing a miracle, Joseph Bartlett,” Sarah said over her shoulder, then to Mrs. Chavalier, “Je vois ce bébé.”

  The baby’s head and shoulders emerged. Mrs. Chevalier’s cheeks blew in and out.

  “Poussez! ”

  Mrs. Chevalier screamed as Sarah eased the baby from the womb, untangled the cord, and wrapped the child in the towel on Mrs. Chevalier’s belly. “Bébé en pleine santé. Toutes nos félicitations.”

  Mrs. Chevalier wept. Her children crawled across the floor to touch their baby brother. Missy held the teacup to Mrs. Chevalier’s lips.

  “Chevalier is French for knight, Mr. Bartlett. This boy will one day slay the kings of Fall River.”

  “So the meek shall inherit the earth,” Joseph said, backing out of the room.

  “Immigrants will shape America in this century.”

  “And I will cheer their ascent.”

  Sarah wiped her hands on a the corner of the towel. “Here comes the rest, Missy. Hand me that bowl. Poussez! ”

  I will pray for them all, Joseph thought. May this brick tenement be his castle. The fields of refuse his bounty. The street urchins his army.

  “You can save them all,” Sarah called. “Time to stand tall.”

  Joseph dropped Hannah Cleveland’s orange on the kitchen table and slipped out of the room and down the stairs. As he reached the curb, Mrs. Chevalier’s screams accompanied Verdi’s courtesan, Violetta, filling the tenement with sadness and joy.

  the narrows

  Joseph baited Will’s hook with the night crawlers he’d just purchased from Fontaine’s. George Pierce wasn’t due till eight thirty and was sure to needle him about the recent curtailment at the association’s mills.

  “Cast it out there.” Joseph pointed at the horizon. “Just like last time.”

  “We didn’t catch anything last time.”

  Joseph snapped the Herald across the fold and sat back, reading. “Today we will. I promise.”

  Will whipped the rod over his shoulder, the sinker smashed into the newspaper then cartwheeled forward, but jerked to a stop when the line caught on the reel. Hook plopped into the water five feet from the end of the dock.

  “Sorry.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Should I recast?”

  Joseph ruffled the paper back into form. “Just be patient.”

  The Bartlett men sat on a rickety boat dock belonging to the Watuppa boat club, facing the south pond. They’d come early to stake out a secluded spot, but the Narrows, a thin strip of land dividing the North and South Watuppa Ponds, didn’t offer much cover from the people walking along the beach, out enjoying the late August morning. The trolley tracks to New Bedford and beyond filled the middle of the land. Stilt cottages and businesses like Fontaine’s that lent paddleboats and ice skates lined the southern strip, while the northern side was the property of the Watuppa Water Board, which forbade boating and fishing and skating and ice harvesting. Fishermen from up the Flint ignored the no-trespassing postings and filled their wicker baskets with perch and black bass. Most anglers dropped lines from the stone causeway or tossed out from the marshy beach, and the northern shore was littered with discarded rods and tackle from men who had been caught in the act.

  Far out in the water, a steamboat skimmed the water. He could just make out rows of legs draped ove
r the top deck. The boat reminded Joseph of the family clambakes Lizzy’s people used to throw on the eastern shore at a placed called Adirondack Grove. He hadn’t spoken to any of them since the funeral.

  A cluster of seagulls crept down the dock. Will tossed them a worm. The lead bird snatched it out of the air.

  “Don’t encourage them,” Joseph said.

  “Everybody’s gotta eat, isn’t that what you always say?”

  “People. Not thieving gulls.”

  “I wish I could fly.”

  Joseph peered over the paper. “Really? And where would you go?”

  “Just see the world. Pyramids. Great Wall. Deserts. But from up there.” Will pointed the tip of the rod.

  “If you pull that off, I’ll be your chaperone gull. I’d like to see those things.”

  “We won’t be gulls. They have no stamina for where we’re going.”

  “What’s it gonna be then? Osprey?”

  “Nah. Not any birds from around here. We need to be seaworthy. Long flyers. Albatross is the ticket. Saw a picture in National Geo. Longest wingspan going. Takes us anywhere we wanna go.” Will turned, blocked the light with his hand. “You really coming with?”

  “Someday.” Joseph drummed his fingers over the paper. “But you go with or without me.”

  The gulls squawked and scattered off the dock.

  “Flying rats is what they are,” George Pierce shouted, whipping his rod before him like a sword. He dropped his tackle on the dock and scrubbed Will’s head. “Top of the morning to you, young William. Paper says it’s gonna be another scorcher.”

  “What’s news?”

  “The weather. A real lobster boil.” Pierce mopped his ruddy face with a cotton hankie. “Sorry about your wife. I assume you received the card from the union?”

  Will turned to his father. “Thank you and yes.” Joseph brushed his son’s cheek. “Watch the line.”

  Pierce lifted his rod to the boy. “Good fishing at this hour.”

  “So, what’s the news?” Damn my father, Joseph thought. Otis had had a special relationship with Pierce’s father. While Otis’s independence won respect in some circles, he was never accepted as true Yankee blue, and the closer Otis worked with Jefferson, the more his fellow mule spinners, men who had known his father in England, felt betrayed. Now, years later, Joseph had risen higher than any of them.