Toward the end of the second day, as they approached the locks at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, the wind, envious of the trees’ royal plumage, was tearing indiscriminately at their garments, sending clouds of multicolored leaves rustling with laughter in all directions. Even above its wrath, they seemed to whisper into the wind’s ear: “Shake us you old blowhard! Shake us with all your might. You’re only doing the Lord’s will!”
On the outskirts of town, they met a man with a team of mules coming toward them on the path. His barge, heavily laden with coal, has just cleared the lock. Aboard, the negro oarsman was poling to keep his craft to the center of the canal, his massive arms swelling with each thrust and push.
“Pull up there, Jonas!” the bargeman cried. “I need to douse the cargo a bit.”
Jonas – who was seventy if he was a day, Thomas thought – gently reined the mules who required no further encourage-ment. They stopped in their tracks and began cropping the grass. Jonas took out his clay pipe and began stuffing it with black leaves he extracted from his pocket.
Thomas tipped his cap as they approached. “ ‘day, sir.”
The teamster was lighting the pipe, drawing the little lick of flame deep into the bowl. He cocked an eye toward the travelers and nodded. “Mm.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know if this town’s got a roomin’ house, now would ya? One where we might get a bite, as well?”
Jonas threw the match into the canal, where it hissed briefly and drowned. “More likely to get bit than get a bite, boy, you are.”
“Me? Nobody knows . . . ”
“Irish, ain’t ya?”
“Aye.”
“That’s all they’d need to know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever heard of the Molly Maguires?”
Thomas shook his head.
“New to the area?”
“Aye.”
Jonas nodded. “ ‘Aye’, he says, like a Micky.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“No, I can see ya don’t,” said the man, giving Sadie a steely once-over, but not seeming to see her. “Well, here’s the long and the short of it, ‘cause I’m a good Christian as don’t want to see no harm come to you and your sister, here.”
Thomas let the relationship stand.
“You look like a farmer. Am I right?”
Thomas nodded reluctantly. He’d have thought that by now he’d have been taken for a seaman.
“Then I’ll put it in terms you can understand. There’s two crops raised in Carbon County; coal,” he tossed a nod toward the barge, where the oarsman was lifting bucketfuls of water from the canal and tossing them into the hold. Thomas had learned from Quiggly that coal often spontaneously combusted due to compression in a ship. He expected the oarsman was attempting to prevent that from happening.
“The other,” he leaned toward them and rasped, “is murder.”
“Murder?” said Thomas, wide-eyed.
“An’ there’s been bumper harvest these last few years,” said Jonas, straightening, at the same time striking a match with which to relight his pipe. “Worse since henchmen for the mine owners took an’ kilt Friday O’Donnell in his own parlor and dragged his wife outside an’ kilt her too.”
He held up his fingers in front of his face. “And ast me if they kilt Jimmy McAlister, too . . . ” He waited, with his fingers at the ready.
“Did they?”
“They did!” said Jonas, folding down one finger. “And did they take Charlie McAllister’s wife out an’ kilt her, too, right beside Mrs. O’Donnell?” He waited again.
“They did?”
“They did!” said Jonas, folding down the remaining clump of his fingers in triumph. “Curse ‘em blind!”
“That’s horrible!”
“But, what’s it ‘ave to do wi’ the lady?” Sadie wanted to know.
Jonas, who had for the most part ignored her thus far, looked at her as if she had materialized from thin air. “What lady?” he said.
“This Molly you’re bleedin’ goin’ on about.” She singed his ear hairs with a few choice epithets.
“Don’t mind her,” Thomas said quickly. “She can’t . . . she’s . . . she’s . . . ”
The old man, concealing himself in a wreath of smoke, bent conspiratorially toward Thomas’ ear. “English, is she?”
“Aye.”
“Aye,” Jonas repeated, nodding. “That may serve you well.” He addressed Sadie. “The lady of which I speak is no lady, m’lady.” He bowed exaggeratedly. “But a team, a group, a family, if you will, of assassins, or redeemers, or vigilantes, or noble warriors, dependin’ which neighborhood in hell you inhabit. They’re called the Molly Maguires.”
And so, with this beginning, Jonas unfurled the terrifying tapestry of troubles between the miners, mostly Irish, and the mine-owners, for the most part English and German, that had lead to the deaths of so many and had made Carbon County a byword for unspeakable ruthlessness and bloodshed.
It was a tangled history beginning, it seemed, when miner complaints about wages and the preventable deaths of hundreds of men in unsafe mines met with owner indifference. When the miners took their grievances to law – constituted of German and English mine owners, lawyers, and judges, and enforced by the company’s Coal and Iron Police – they met a wall of resistance, foot-dragging, and obfuscation that no amount of legal wrangling could undermine.
Seeking justice on moral rather than legal terms, they launched a program of sabotage, destroying train tracks, sealing mines, disabling equipment. For this, the owner’s countermeasure was to select at random, from among the miners, individuals to serve as examples. These unfortunate souls would find themselves immediately unemployed and their families without a home in the space of a few minutes, added to which was heavy debt at the company store – now unpayable – and the sure knowledge that no mine in the area would hire them thereafter.
In retaliation the miners went on strike.
In retaliation the owners brought in strikebreakers.
In retaliation the Irish formed the Molly Maguires.
In retaliation, the operators unleashed a reign of terror, hiring an armed band of Welsh vigilantes who took the name of the Modocs and joined the corporation-owned Coal and Iron Police in waylaying, ambushing, and murdering militant miners.
“That’s when the killin’ really started,” said Jonas.
In kangaroo courts, the Maguires tried, convicted, and condemned numerous individuals in absentia, then appointed assassins from among their number to carry out the sentence. At first, this crude justice was meted out only to mine officials and functionaries, such as the police and the Modocs. But – in the face of brutal reprisals against not miners only, but their wives and children – it became indiscriminate and wholesale, inflicted without mercy, even upon members of their own people who were suspected of consorting with ‘the outside.’ Midnight hangings, deep-woods crucifixions, beheadings, and burnings: no abomination of the human imagination was left unexercised by either side.
“It’s the Blood Circle, you see,” said Jonas, tapping the side of his nose.
“Blood Circle?” his hearers chorused.
“You kill my cat, I kill your dog. Then you kill my pig, and I kill your cow. You burn my barn, and I burn your house. You kill my wife. I kill your children then . . . ” he spun his forefinger toward infinity. “What’s left of my descendents kill what’s left of your descendents. The Blood Circle. A thirsty beast.”
“It never ends,” said Thomas thoughtfully.
Jonas nodded and spat into the canal. “Not ‘til everyone’s dead and no one recollects why.”
“Ready, Jonas!” called the oarsman. “And give us a little tug, will ya? I think the rudder’s caught in weed.”
Jonas sharply flicked the rump of the inside mule and he bolted for a step or two, providing sufficient momentum to pull the rudder loose.
“All of which is a warnin’
,” said Jonas over his shoulder. “If you go into town, be deaf, be dumb, be simple-minded, or be all three, but don’t be Irish.”
Thomas and Sadie watched for a long time as the mule driver and his barge disappeared around a bend in the river.
“Blimey. Nice country you brung me to.”
Thomas turned and briefly studied the outskirts of Mauch Chunk. “I’m for givin’ this town a miss. What d’you say?”
“I say we get close enough to toss a match on it,” said Sadie, “then run like ‘ell.”
Without further debate, they struck off westerly through apple orchards bordering the towpath. These soon gave way to fields of recently harvested corn and, beyond that, thick forest which, by now, the wind was shaking with unrestrained fury.
In the gloaming, they followed deer paths through the woods. Often they were within a minute or two of settling for the night, when they descried the glowing windows of a nearby farmhouse or smelled the smoke of a farmer’s fire. With the teamster’s litany of horrors still ringing in their ears, evidence of human company was not comforting.
Deeper within the forest – it was impossible, now, to tell which direction they were headed – the wind didn’t penetrate with such force. When at last, in the pitch dark, they found a small overhanging ledge under which they could start a fire and lie down, only the tops of the trees were caught by the passing gale. The trunks creaked and groaned, but of the wind itself, not enough filtered through to render fire-starting difficult.
“Looks like it’s apples t’night, Tommy boy,” said Sadie, removing a couple from her pockets. They stuck the apples on sticks and roasted them over the fire, filling the air with the spicy sweetness of apple pie. When their meal was complete, their lips and fingers coated with its sticky residue, they started throwing the remains at one another, using the sticks as catapults.
Late that night Sadie found it necessary to answer nature’s call. Unhappily she drew back the blanket, undraped herself from Thomas’ warm body and, wrapping herself in her arms, stumbled drowsily toward the trees at the periphery of their camp. Thomas had showed her how to put a fallen log to its best use, so she pulled down her pants and assumed the position. As she waited for nature to take its course, she listened to the wind tearing through the tops of the trees. There was no moon, or, if there were, it was covered with clouds, but she couldn’t see those either. Just a deep, smudgy darkness that reeked of sulfur from all the coal fires burning up and down the valley.
As she listened, she became aware of a contrapuntal creaking, as if something was swaying back and forth in direct opposition to the wind. This creaking had little in common with that of the trees. The sound was different. Lower. Rubbing. Not high and squeaky like wood on wood or bark on bark.
Her business concluded, she hoisted her pants and tied them snuggly around her waist. Though it seemed to come from nearby, the distinctive sound was hard to separate from the windy cacophony in which it was embedded. She closed her eyes and concentrated. There it was. She felt her way toward it in the darkness, drawing closer and closer to it until, from long familiarity aboard ship, she recognized the sound. A rope, with some great weight suspended from it, was swinging from a limb high above.
At that moment her outstretched fingers touched upon a boot suspended in mid-air, swinging slowly back and forth.
She screamed and began running toward the feeble ring of sparks marking the campfire. She hadn’t made it all the way when Thomas grabbed her. “What is it?”
“There’s a man hangin’!” Sadie sobbed, nearly hysterical.
“Hangin’?” said Thomas, quickly catching the contagion of panic. “What do you mean, hangin’?”
Sadie’s grotesque impersonation of a hanging man, barely visible in the hell-red embers, was nonetheless effective.
Thomas stared holes in the darkness. “Where?”
Without turning around, Sadie threw a gesture behind her.
“You stay here.” Thomas swallowed hard. There were some things he just didn’t care if he never saw. A hanging man was one of them. He knew it was an image that would haunt him the rest of his life. Still, if there was the remotest chance that the man might still be alive, he had no choice.
Only seconds after leaving the small circle of trees that demarked their campsite, he heard the sound of the rope.
Extending his arms to fend off limbs and twigs, he lurched ahead and, guided by the now unmistakable sound of the rope as Sadie had been, his fingers were soon brushed by a boot as it passed. Though he’d been expecting it, though he had set out with the express intention of finding the hanging man, he nonetheless jumped back when contact was made. Bile rose immediately, burning his throat, and he choked it down.
“Best done quick,” he told himself.
He reached out and, next time the boot brushed by, grabbed it with both hands. No doubt it was occupied. But there was no life in it. No reaction.
“Oo is it?”
So intent had he been focused that he hadn’t heard Sadie approach. He jumped as if struck by lighting. “Damn, Sadie!”
“Oo, nice langwidge f’r a gen’lman!”
“You startled me. I told you to stay back by the fire.”
“I thought I felt some wind on me face. ‘Oo is it, then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only just felt his boots.”
“You ain’t gonna learn much from ‘is boots.”
“Shut up.” Once again, Thomas reached out until the boots swung by and seized them so the body stopped swinging. “I’ve got to get up, somehow, an’ cut ‘im down.” He took out his knife.
“Why don’t we just pick ‘is pockets and be off?” Sadie wondered.
“Because that ain’t right,” Thomas said sharply, annoyed at having to constantly justify common human decency to his companion. It was as if such acts were new and strange to her, and he found that troubling.
Sadie made a torch and lit it from the fire. Twice during what turned out to be a long, gruesome process as the body was taken down, Thomas puked. The noxious stench of gut-fermented apples was enhanced by that of recent decomposition, a grizzly concoction he would not soon forget. At last he laid the man on the ground. No sooner had he stood up and arched his aching back than Sadie, with her free hand, was rifling through the dead man’s pockets, from one of which she withdrew a leather wallet that had seen long service. She handed it to Thomas. Reluctantly, he opened it and sorted through several slips of paper.
“His name’s Charles Sharpe.”
“Any money?”
“Sadie!”
“Well, ‘e’s dead, ain’t ‘e? Wot good’s it to ‘im if there is?”
Thomas tipped the wallet upside down and spread it wide open. Only a few pieces of paper fell out. “Nothin’. See? And if there was any money, we’d have to find his fam’ly an’ give it to ‘em.”
Sadie shook her head. “I don’t know where you get y’er ideas from, Tommy boy.”
Thomas stood up. “We may have to find ‘em anyways.”
“Wot you mean?”
“I mean, we can’t very well jus’ leave ‘im here, can we?”
Once again, Sadie found his logic unexplainable. “Why not? ‘e’ll rot ‘ere as well as in an ‘ole in the ground.”
“What if he’s married? Don’t you think ‘is wife would like to know? Or ‘is children? What about justice?”
“Justice ‘oo?”
“Justice for the men who did this to ‘im!”
“We ain’t the law, Tommy.”
“Every man’s the law, Sadie. Understand? Every man’s got to do what’s right when ‘e can. That’s what makes laws work.”
“Law’s what got you kicked out of Irelan’.” Sadie tossed the hair from her face, but the wind preferred it as it was. “Hoo. Glad I ain’t a man then, else I’d probably get all wobbly doin’ this.” With practiced hands she went quickly through the rest of the man’s pants’ pockets. He wasn’t wearing a coat. The search turned up two dol
lars and forty-seven cents in change, a cube of spruce sap chewing gum in waxed paper, a box of matches, cigarette papers, an empty tobacco pouch, and a skeleton key. The cigarette papers and tobacco pouch she threw aside, the rest she handed to Thomas, except the chewing gum, which she popped in her mouth.
He looked at her agog. “Sometimes I despair of you, Sadie,” he said. His mother had often said the same to him, and it seemed appropriate in the present circumstance.
In the end it was Sadie, not Thomas, who had to go into town, find Mrs. Sharpe, and inform her she was a widow. She wasn’t prepared when the woman swooned. Instinctively she threw her arms around her and, together, they descended gently to the floor. Two children, the oldest not more than three, appeared at the foot of the narrow stairs and, with wide eyes, witnessed the birth of all their future sorrows. At that moment, some nameless, transforming spirit entered Sadie’s soul and, for the first time in her life, she sympathized with her fellow human beings.
She took the two dollars and forty-seven cents from her shirt pocket and put it on the rough table by the door, the children watched her. “Can you get some water f’r y’er ma?” The oldest child went to the washstand in the corner, dipped a tin ladle full, and brought it to her. “An’ ‘ow ‘bout a cloth?”
The child, probably a little girl, though Sadie couldn’t tell for sure, removed a printed apron from a hook by the stove and handed it to her.
Sadie wet a corner of the apron in the ladle and wiped it across Mrs. Sharpe’s brow, repeating the process until, after some two or three minutes, the woman came to. Sadie couldn’t help thinking it would have been better if she’d just stayed asleep, forever.
Silence the Dead Page 22
