American Red

by David Marlett

  Regardless, this request today, by Reverend Sanders, was different. This was intolerable. Never before had Darrow been treated like one of the Haywood servants, asked to take orders for base transactions for whomever Bill dispatched to Darrow’s office. Not for Federation lackeys. Not for pocketed legislators nor judges. Not for the one-eyed boss’s polio-stricken wife. And certainly not on behalf of her irrational, self-absorbed religion that even Haywood loathed. Nevertheless, Darrow inhaled a breath of servility and muttered, “Let’s talk in my office, Reverend.”

  “Mr. Darrow,” Carla implored again, just shy of stamping her foot. “I need to speak with you. If I may. Now.”

  Darrow motioned Reverend Sanders toward the interior office and pulled the door shut behind the man. He turned to Carla. “My goodness, girl, what is it?”

  “When I was getting your remedy, I saw Mr. Orchard.”

  “Haywood’s bulldog? His human one. What of it?”

  “Mr. Haywood asked me to report anything I might see—”

  “Yes, report those things to him. Not to me.”

  “He was between buildings, reading. He was being mysterious.”

  “Reading? No! That is so mysterious,” quipped Darrow. “You should try it sometime. Is there more?”

  She scowled at him. “Yesterday, when we were going through Mr. Haywood’s correspondence, you told me to remove anything written on his personal paper, the yellow kind.”

  “What of it?”

  “You said it was never to be outside of Mr. Haywood’s office.”

  “Can this recitation—”

  “It was that sort. Yellow,” she added. “What Mr. Orchard was reading in the alleyway.”

  Darrow froze like a hunter hearing the distant crack of a stick. “Hmm,” he said, his brow furrowing. He moved to the window and looked toward the Pioneer Building. “You saw him just now?”

  “Yes, Sir. He was reading it like he didn’t want to be seen. Then he put it inside his hat.”

  “Thank you, Miss Capone.” He crossed to his office door. “It was probably nothing, but you should tell Mr. Haywood.”

  “All right.”

  Darrow turned the knob to his office and swung the door, rapping the head of the minister who had been listening.

  <><><>

  Four hours later, near the back of the Gassell Saloon, Haywood’s stout hand was under the table, spread across Carla’s leg, his groomed fingertips feeling her knee through her skirt. “You should be working with me,” he whispered in her ear. He had her on his left side, so his dead eye was less visible to her. “Why am I wasting such a beauty on my dullard lawyer? You should be in this building. You could work here, bringing beers up to me. We’d have fun.”

  “Mr. Darrow is nice,” Carla managed, scooting away, disgust tightening her shoulders.

  “Oh now, Carlotta, you’d rather work here. This is the center of everything. Everyone wants to work near me. You can come work in my office. I wasn’t serious about you working in this place. No, work upstairs. You’re smart. Your talents would be wasted in a saloon. You need to be up with me.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, but if I wasn’t working for Mr. Darrow, I’d want to work undercover—to be an agent for the Federation.”

  “Under the covers! Slow down there.”

  With a disingenuous smile, she looked at the door. “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. You want to do something exciting.” He grinned broadly. “Something dangerous.”

  She stood. “I want to help with the workers’ struggle.”

  “Where are you going? he whined. “Stay with me awhile.”

  She hesitated. Any desire to tell him about the paper hidden in Orchard’s hat had vanished. She only wanted to leave, to be gone from his clawing fingers and lecherous sneer.

  “Sit,” he commanded.

  She sighed and did so, though angling herself at the edge of her chair like a squirrel on a park bench, poised to jump.

  “The workers’ struggle?” he asked, quoting her. “You’re a bricky Bolshevik now? Good for you.”

  “I don’t know,” she muttered. “Mr. Darrow is an inspiration.”

  “Clarence? He’s my lawyer. I hire and fire lawyers all the time.”

  “Ok,” she said, unsure how else to respond. “I must get back.”

  “Wait. Wait. Have a drink with me.”

  “It’s not … It’s too early for me.”

  He considered her for a moment, then snorted. “Fine. I surrender. You drive a tough bargain, Miss Capone. I’ll tell you what—you want an assignment? Something dangerous?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Be a spy for me. I’ve got an eye for talent—but just one.” He laughed at his joke, but she didn’t. “A man of mine is going to Boise, day after tomorrow. You go too. Take the same train. Follow him, but don’t let him know who you are or what you’re doing.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Harry Orchard.”

  Her brow furrowed. “All right. What do I do in Boise?”

  “Get a job at the Saratoga Hotel. Then wait. We’ll contact you.”

  “You’re sending me away?” she asked, processing it all.

  “You want to help the Federation, right? So be more than Clarence’s secretary. Nothing dangerous happens in a law office.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  “Talk to Winnie. She’ll tell you the details. You’ll be good.”

  “That’s quite a distance from here.”

  “Are you worried you’ll miss me?”

  “No. I mean—”

  “I’ll visit you. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Boise.”

  She hesitated. “Of course.”

  “In fact, there’s a play performed there, called Sapho. Heard of it? You’d like it. I’ll come take you.”

  “No, Sir,” she said. “I mean, I’ve not heard of it.”

  “It’s scandalous. About women and desire. Says you women have the same desires as us men. What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was a success on Broadway, in New York City. They called it ‘concupiscent.’ Do you know what that means?”

  She shook her head.

  “Means lustful. Sensual. Why it’s now in Boise, Idaho, of all places, I don’t know, but everyone’s talking about it. You’ll like it, I can tell.”

  Carla sniffed, looked away, one hand fumbling with a utensil.

  He patted her knee again and said, “You can go now.”

  “Thank you.” She got to her feet quickly.

  He stood and kissed her cheek. “My little concupiscent fighter for the workers’ struggle.” He slipped a hand around her waist. “Do this and I’ll forget you refused me.”

  She froze.

  “Refused to work in my office,” he grumbled.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m just teasing you. Go now.”

  “Yes,” she said, forcing her cheeks to smile. “Thank you.”

  <><><>

  – 7 –

  WEDNESDAY

  October 24, 1906

  By the time Harry Orchard was on the Union Pacific heading north from Denver, he knew he was being followed by at least two undercover Pinkertons, but he gave them little mind. There was nothing for them to discover, nothing new for them to see. Even if they followed him all the way to Boise, before he undertook any action he would see to it they were put off his trail, or otherwise killed.

  He settled in for the eighteen-hour journey in a second-class passenger car. Though he planned to read some, he hoped to sleep, rolling across the grasslands, up into Wyoming, then west past Green River, then up and across to Boise. He had made this rail trip many times before. He was prepared. He had two cigars in one pocket of his
coat (the coyote-brown one with the bullet hole in the back), five dollars in the other pocket, and his small Smith & Wesson revolver in his pants. All a man needed. He only wished he had brought a Denver Post to read along the way. He could have stolen one easily enough at the station. After making a mental note to disembark in Laramie to buy (if he must) a paper, he commenced studying his fellow passengers. Some were already sleeping though the train had yet to cross the Platte. Most were men. The few women were wives, he figured. Most of them. All lumbering along. One woman was alone, her back to him: a mother in a blue dress holding her child. A whore perhaps. If so, then she was the holy trinity: Mother, daughter, and whorey ghost—three in one. He chuckled at the thought.

  He turned his attention to the train car itself, especially the wood-slatted, curved ceiling. He remembered the similar passenger car in northern Idaho, months ago, coming into the Bunker Hill Mine, right before he and Addis jumped off. No, Steve Adams. He now knew that rat-face’s real name. He envisioned this car packed with a similar load of dynamite. He glanced around, wondering if anyone would survive if he placed even half of that here. Of course not. He imagined the destructive impact of just one dynamite stick in this car. If placed there, under those three men across the aisle and two sections forward, it would kill them, including the two Pinks. Certainly. But how many others? What if the explosives were placed outside, on top of the car? The blast would shatter the roof, but would those slats still kill? Yes. And the holy young woman would die. At that moment she turned. He could see her clearly now, across the aisle—a young brunette in a blue dress. A dimpled smile. Holding her swaddled baby. Too beautiful to be a whore. Thus not the trinity. Damn. The more he studied her, the more familiar she seemed. He waited, hoping she might make eye contact with him. But no. She was just another woman to whom he was invisible. It was him who was the ghost.

  “Goddamned nigger soldiers!” spewed from a man ahead, followed by “Wobbly scum!” from another, and the two got to their feet, one throwing a wild swing at the other. Then came the other man’s crushing riposte—ferocious fist meeting jaw. The first man was already unconscious before his head slammed into the young woman nearby, knocking her baby free such that it hit the floor, the blankets opening on impact, revealing the swaddled content was not an infant, but rather, was a collection of tightly rolled newspapers.

  Curious, thought Orchard, remaining motionless, observing. She’s not a mother either. Only pretended to be. Other men stood, moving forward with equal parts desire to calm the situation as to impress the beauty scrambling to retrieve her flailed Denver Post child from being boot-scattered down the aisle. When part of it came alongside Orchard, he leaned and retrieved it and stared at the headlines:

  IDAHO GOVERNOR ARRESTS

  TWO-THOUSANDTH UNION MAN!

  Four Hundred Held in Barns Without Trial

  Orchard gave a breathy chuckle. Now he knew why that governor’s name was on the paper folded into the brim of his hat. He read further:

  Boise, Idaho. On Wednesday last, Victor McDarment became the two-thousandth man arrested and his arms confiscated by Pinkerton agents upon the martial law orders of Governor Steunenberg following the bombing of the Bunker Hill Mine and Concentrator last July. Beginning August 20, 1906, the governor ordered the arrests of all men suspected to be members of, or otherwise directly affiliated with, the Western Federation of Miners. The arrests have continued from that date to this, with the two-thousandth occurring Wednesday last. Many non-union men have been arrested as well, including, by way of example, John Venerable, an itinerant dentist for the miners. The men are being held in confined quarters without bail until such time as the governor deems the crisis to be resolved, and the perpetrators of the calamitous deed are arrested. President Roosevelt has ordered a regiment of soldiers to take up guard posts surrounding the confined union men, and to manage the captives’ orderly release on a date yet determined.

  Yes, the governor of Idaho was a traitor, just as Mr. Haywood had said. Ordering the arrests of all labor union men in the state—a true son of a bitch if ever there was one, thought Orchard. It would be a pleasure to kill the man—not just the man, but the elected governor. That meant it would be an assassination. He smiled. It would be his first assassination. It needed to be done right. Something special, if he could muster it. So how? By bomb certainly, as Mr. Haywood had instructed. But the governor would have extra security. Orchard couldn’t rush it. This might take a couple of months. He needed to settle into Boise, look around, create a new identity, be patient, plan, then execute. Assassinate. It might be his best bombing yet. But for now, one problem remained—two, to be precise. He focused on the two Pinks until they were forced to look away. He had a task to do in Boise, assigned by Mr. Haywood, and he would get it done. A great task. A noble task. A pleasure. And those two worms would not impede him.

  ***

  Three rows away in the same car, Carla cursed herself. How could she have been so clumsy as to drop the bundle? It was reckless to pretend to have a baby in the first place. It had been a notion she conjured in Denver’s Union Station—a rashly enacted idea that her caring for a child might mask the true purpose of her journey: the undercover, Boise assignment Mr. Haywood had given her, with details having been provided by Winnie.

  Winnie Minor was her best friend. Or, better put, Winnie had been her best friend during their younger years in Spokane. Now Carla wasn’t sure. In the years immediately following their schooling, they had lost touch. Winnie had moved to Denver to help her sister, Neva, who was suffering with polio. It was later that Carla learned Neva had married the president of the Federation of Western Miners, William Haywood.

  Then, last year, when Carla’s father and brother were killed in the Stratton Mine collapse, Carla found herself needing to do something, to somehow strike back, to join the workers’ struggle, to fight for what she believed in, to do what she could as a woman. She joined the Socialist Party of the Northwestern Range, but found it feeble—a gathering of lonely, castrated male wolves baying at an empty sky, a thousand miles from being heard. Besides, she preferred to work with women, as the men were too horny to hear even her base opinions. The east coast suffragettes were women, as were the members of the garment unions. And women led the temperance movement. But those were thinly active in eastern Washington State, and none offered the justice she sought, the revenge she needed. It was the greed of the Mine Owners Association that had killed her father and brother. Those owners were responsible. They were her enemy. Not just any capitalists—but mine owners. Not just any men denying women the vote—but mine owners. Not just any men who boozed away their family’s money—but mine owners. And all who supported and served those owners, including the Pinkertons. Thus she realized that her recourse could only come through aiding the enemies of the mine owners. Actually, their single enemy: the mine workers union, the Western Federation of Miners.

  So, two months prior to this train ride, Carla had set out to get herself ingratiated with the Federation. To become a Wobbly. But how? At that time, she knew only two people associated with a labor union: her childhood friend, Winnie Minor, sister of the Federation president’s wife; and Clarence Darrow, the Federation’s lead attorney. She didn’t know Mr. Darrow at that time, had never met him, but she felt a bond with him. Though he had lost their trial against the Stratton mine owners, to her, Clarence Darrow was extraordinary. In fact, it was while reading the transcript of his Stratton trial arguments that she decided to become a lawyer herself. Or a politician. Neither were tenable ideas for a young woman. Not really. But Mr. Darrow’s eloquence had spurred her, clapping to flight the birds of her youthful exuberance.

  In September, she left Spokane for Denver. There she rekindled a semblance of friendship with Winnie and made her wishes clear: First, she wanted to help the Federation, however she could. Second, she wanted to meet Clarence Darrow. From there, events took a quick pace. Within hours, Winnie intro
duced Carla to Mr. Haywood (whose lecherous behavior Winnie seemed to ignore). The next morning, Carla met Mr. Darrow. During that brief conversation, Mr. Darrow made known his need for a secretary. Carla quickly obtained Mr. Haywood’s approval and reported to work that afternoon. Now, seven weeks later, Mr. Haywood had assigned her the covert task that placed her here, on this train, going back north. Not all the way to Spokane, but close: Boise.

  Perhaps she had ruined everything with the dumb idea of pretending to carry a baby, hoping it would conceal her purpose. No, that was not the main reason she had performed the ruse—not if she was honest. She had hoped the faux-baby would give her physical distance from men, would buffer their taunts and advances. And perhaps would give her a bit of imagined comfort in this scary endeavor for which she felt woefully unprepared.

  But it hadn’t worked. Instead, in the male tussle, she had lost hold of the ploy. And now that moon-faced man, Harry Orchard—the very man she was assigned to follow, the man who was not supposed to notice her—that same man was surmising her, aware of her clumsy attempt at deceit. And it wasn’t all in his eyes. It was the way he examined her, undressing her in his mind. She knew that invasive look too well.

  Snap to your senses, she scolded herself. Do better! She steeled herself and made a new decision. The bad idea of the paper baby had been born from anxiety—a means to hold men at arm’s length until she wanted them near. But that wasn’t going to work. She would fail if she acted from a position of weakness, in reaction to fear. Instead of shielding herself from men, she needed to embrace the most powerful man-mastering tool she possessed: her sexuality. Perhaps it was second, with her wit being first. Regardless, she would employ them both. She had a task to do in Boise. She would get it done. And if she was lucky and chose well, she might have fun doing it—though not with the likes of Harry Orchard.