by Donis Casey
Shaw gave Rob a knowing wink across the table, but Alafair was inclined to give him a scolding. “Robin, I’m surprised the union can spare you long enough to visit your folks, though. I thought the organization was unable to function without you.”
Rob heaved a sigh and set down his mug. “Well, after Bisbee, I told them I aim to take off for a spell and get my breath.”
Shaw frowned. “Bisbee? Bisbee, Arizona? What happened in Bisbee?”
Rob shot him an incredulous glance. “You don’t know? I figured it’d be all over the newspapers.”
“No, and I’m sure that if anybody around here who knows you’re kin to Alafair had read your name in the papers, they’d bust a gut to get out here and tell me about it. What have you got into now?”
Alafair didn’t wait for an answer. “Robin, did you do something illegal? Are you on the run?”
“No, Alafair, I did not do anything illegal and I am not on the run. I wouldn’t drag you into it if I was. But considering the temper of the times, I did decide to lay low for a spell.”
He looked down at his boot tips. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been traveling so much lately that I’m tired to my bones. I wired the I.W.W. headquarters in San Francisco and told them I had a notion to visit my sister for a while, and they said they might just barely do without me for a few weeks. I’d like to find a job of work to keep me occupied. Something where I don’t have to make speeches.”
“Your timing couldn’t be better,” Shaw said, “because I could use a good hand for a spell, and you used to know how to make yourself useful around the farm. I could give you a dollar a day plus a bonus now and then, whenever I sell a string of mules or a couple of calves. Does farm work suit your requirements, or have you organized so many unions that you’ve forgot how to turn your hand to the plow?”
Rob grinned and rubbed his thumb through his beard. “Not hardly! I’d be downright happy to get my hands in the dirt for awhile, and I’m your man for running stock of any ilk. I’ve broke my share of mules, too. If you don’t mind that I’m short-term, I’d be much obliged.”
“You know I’ll be selling most of my mules to the Army. Fort Reno is a remount station, and they’ll take as many as I can sell them.”
Rob shrugged. “Me and the U.S. Army have had our differences, but I have no quarrel with how any man makes an honest living, as long as he don’t take advantage of another man.”
Alafair leaned across the table to refill Shaw’s coffee mug. “There’s an empty bed in that room out behind the toolshed where Gee Dub has been sleeping when he comes home from school. I reckon Robin could bunk with him as long as he wants and be right comfortable.”
Shaw nodded. “That’s settled then.”
“Now I don’t want to intrude on the lad’s privacy,” Rob objected. “I can curl up in any corner you’ve got.”
Alafair was affronted. “You will not! Gee Dub spent twenty years of his life sleeping in this house with his brother and eight sisters. He’ll be happy as a little heifer in clover to have some company.”
“Well, all right, then. Sounds grand.”
Alafair clapped Rob on the shoulder, clearly delighted at the prospect of having her brother around for awhile. “Good! I’ll get you some quilts and a pillow for that empty bed out there. You can take meals with us or I’ll fix you up a pail whenever you want.”
“I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven! Most of the time I’m sleeping in somebody’s loft!”
Shaw was amused. “Don’t the Industrial Workers of the World pay you enough to rent a room?”
“They do, but the towns I generally work in are so small that you could spit from one end to the other, and have neither hotel or boarding house.”
“Maybe you’ll like staying in one place so much you’ll decide to settle at last, get you a home of your own.”
“Maybe, Alafair,” Rob agreed, but his tone made it obvious that he was just being polite. He was a man with important work to do.
Chapter Nine
“Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight”
—The Worker, national newspaper of
the Industrial Workers of the World
Shaw threw Rob a pair of leather gauntlets, brought the wagon around, and off to the fields they went. By the end of the day, the clouds had thickened, obscuring the sunset and bringing darkness early. It was a good thing, Rob thought. He didn’t know if he could continue working at such a pace for even ten more minutes.
Shaw called an end and the two of them drove the wagon back to the barn, unhitched the team of mules, fed, watered, and rubbed them down before trudging back up to the house in the dark. Rob could hardly keep his eyes open, and he was aware that this fact entertained Shaw no end.
Alafair met them on the back porch with a pitcher of hot water, and the men washed up before stepping into the kitchen. The room was cheerful with the yellow light of kerosene lamps, and fragrant with the smell of potatoes, gravy, and hush puppies fried in drippings.
A tall, lanky, young man with a shag of dark curls and deep brown eyes with a hint of mischief in them was sitting at the kitchen table. He stood up to shake Rob’s hand.
“Gee Dub,” Rob said. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Gee Dub was dressed in khaki trousers, a faded blue collarless shirt, and a dark brown vest. He towered over his slight uncle. His smile was warm as he murmured Rob’s name.
“I heard you’re home from college for the summer, bucko. What have you been studying up there at A&M?”
“I’ve been studying agriculture, Uncle Robin. I’ve been over at my grandfolks’ today, applying all my fancy new learning to Grandpapa Peter’s apple orchard.”
The men sat down in the parlor as Alafair and the girls set the table. “Last I saw you,” Rob said, “you were a boy, Nephew, and now you’re a man. But I’d sure recognize you anywhere for Shaw Tucker’s son. I see a bit of my brother George in your face, too. You sure got his hair.”
“You haven’t changed any, Uncle Robin, except for…” Gee Dub swung a finger under his chin to indicate Rob’s beard.
“Oh, that. I took a notion to grow one a year or two ago, just to see how it would look, and maybe save myself some razor burn. Didn’t realize that it’d come in gray as Aunt Rhodie’s goose and make me look twenty years older than I am.”
“Why do you keep it, then?” Alafair asked, from her place at the stove.
“Why, it makes me look distinguished, don’t you think, Sis?”
“Makes you look like a reprobate.”
Rob and Shaw exchanged an amused glance before Rob continued. “Don’t worry, Alafair. Someday I’ll cut it off.”
“I like it,” Charlie interjected. “Looks manly.”
Rob winked at the boy. “That was my aim.”
“I hear Daddy put you to work before you could hang up your hat,” Gee Dub said. “How’d you like being a field hand again?”
Rob shook his head. “I enjoyed it. It’s good to do an honest day’s work with your hands. But I reckon I’m way out of practice or I’m getting old, one or the other, because it nearly killed me. I look to be stove up like an eighty-year-old man tomorrow.”
Charlie snorted. “Aw, he did fine, Gee. He slung them bales like he’s been doing it all his life.”
“I’ve slung my share of bales,” Rob acknowledged, “but I’m afraid I’ve spent too many years advocating for the working man instead of doing a day’s work myself.”
“Ironic,” Gee Dub said.
Charlie looked up at his uncle. “He’s always using words nobody understands since he’s been off at A&M.”
“I’ll buy you a dictionary, Charlie,” Gee Dub said. “I wouldn’t worry about sore muscles, Uncle Robin. Dad will see to it that you get the kinks worked out in short order.”
***
Mary Luken
bach got right to the point. “Charlie rode over to the house on that hot-tempered roan of his this afternoon and told us all about Uncle Robin coming in. We figured we’d come over and say hey before y’all go to bed.”
“I figured he has told everybody he could, Mary,” Alafair said. “Robin is the most interesting thing to happen around this farm in a long spell. Y’all better come on in and sit down for some pie.”
Mary and her German-born husband, Kurt, followed Alafair into the kitchen. Mary laughed when Rob turned to see who had come in. “You look just the same, Uncle Robin, except for that gray beard!”
Rob laughed, too. “My, but this brush is an occasion for comment. Hello, darlin’, glad to see you.” Mary introduced her husband, and Rob shook Kurt’s hand too heartily, sympathetic to what Kurt was going to have to put up with from his neighbors, if popular sentiment continued in its present direction.
“This pretty little blue-eyed gal trying to crawl under your chair is Judy.” Alafair retrieved a white-blond eighteen-month-old from the floor. She cast a glance around. “Where’s Chase?”
Mary answered. “Him and Grace are out in the yard hunting fireflies.”
Alafair nodded. “Chase has taken a shine to Mary and Kurt, and especially Judy. He spends so much time over there that Mary is practically raising him to suit her.”
Rob liked Mary and Kurt at first sight. Mary was as round and gregarious as her German-born husband was straight up and down and taciturn, but otherwise, the Lukenbachs were very much alike. Both were fair-haired and friendly, with wide blue eyes that held no secrets. Kurt never said two words when one would do, but Mary talked and laughed enough for both of them. If Rob hadn’t known that their daughter Judy was adopted, he would never have guessed it. She was as fair and open as her parents, her round blue eyes taking in the action.
The conversation was lively, everyone intent on bringing Rob up to date on their lives and curious to hear what he had been up to for the past decade. Eventually Charlie half-turned in his chair to face Rob. “By next Friday we’ll know who all is going to get to go to France. I know a bunch of fellows who registered back in June. Pretty exciting, ain’t it?”
Rob carefully placed his fork on the table next to his plate. “Can’t say I’m excited, pard’. I’m sorry that we’ve managed to get ourselves into this war after all.”
“But we just had to go to war, didn’t we, Uncle Robin?” Charlie was amazed that anyone could see it any other way. “After the Germans offered to give Mexico back the whole of Texas if they’d invade us, there wasn’t much else President Wilson could do, was there?”
A twitch of amusement crossed Rob’s face. “You’re expecting that Mexico could wrest Texas back from us, are you?”
“I can’t figure out why Germany would do us that way,” Shaw said. “I’d think the last thing Hindenburg would want would be for the U.S. to get into the fracas.”
“From what I’ve been reading in the papers, Germany doesn’t think much of America’s will to fight,” Gee Dub put in. “They would rather go to war with us than give up sinking every neutral ship that gets near England or France.”
“That’s an insightful comment.” Rob’s tone conveyed his respect for this opinion. “Of course, if this country would stop trying to make a bunch of steel barons richer by selling war goods overseas, rather than seeing to our own folks who have no way to put food on the table, we wouldn’t have come to this pass in the first place.”
Charlie was scandalized. “As much as you say you care about the downtrodden, Uncle, why ain’t you over in Europe, trying to help the poor folks who are being massacred?”
“I’ve had some experience with this country’s ‘rescue operations,’ Nephew, and if we’ve gone to war, it isn’t to help the Europeans, but to help Mr. Getty and his like get richer than they are, so I reckon we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that point.”
“I reckon so!” The light of battle was in Charlie’s eyes. “All I can say is I hope it lasts long enough so I can turn eighteen and enlist. I’d like to show them Huns a thing or two.”
“Your eighteenth birthday is nearly two years away, son,” Shaw pointed out. “This business will be over long before then.”
“I don’t know, Daddy. It’s been going on in Europe for almost three years already. Gee Dub’ll probably get to go, lucky dog…”
Gee Dub looked up from his plate when Charlie said his name, but didn’t comment. Shaw flicked another glance at Alafair. One of her hands was gripping the coffee pot handle with white knuckles. She put the other on his shoulder. He casually reached up and draped his hand over hers as he addressed Charlie. “There’s no use to borrow trouble, son. The country is not ready to send troops overseas yet.”
“But we will be, Daddy! Why, fellows are joining up by the thousands. And you know as well as I do that there’s going to be more than one draft.”
Kurt offered an opinion at last. “I did not really think it would happen, us getting into the war. The reason Mr. Wilson got re-elected was because he kept us out of war.” He shook his head. “Still, it is done now, and I for one will do my duty as an American.”
Mary had not said anything, but she looked so unhappy that Alafair caught Shaw’s eye and shook her head.
“And if that happens, Charlie Boy,” Shaw interjected, “we’ll deal with it then. As for now, the direction this discussion has taken is not good for the digestion.”
Charlie could tell by his father’s tone that the conversation was at an end. He sat back in his chair, sorry to have introduced such an incendiary topic. He tried to change the subject. “Tell you what, Ma. I’ll pay Uncle Robin a nickel my own self if he’ll patch the next hole in the roof if it starts to rain again, and save me from having to do it.”
“You finish up your supper and go to bed,” Alafair said. “It’s late and morning comes early, don’t you know. Gee Dub, Robin is going to bunk with you out in the shed. Grab a lantern off the back porch, and you can show your uncle Robin the way. Mary, I’ll wrap up some of this pie for y’all to take home with you.”
The boys left for their respective tasks and Rob looked up at his sister. “I’m sorry, Alafair. I should have kept my notions to myself.”
“It’s all right,” Shaw answered for her. “He’s just young and looking for action.”
“Well, I’ll be quiet from now on. I didn’t come to bring a sword, as Dad would say.” He sighed and changed the subject. “Gee Dub’s made a fine-looking man.”
Shaw nodded, trying not to look too proud. “He’s just finished his second year at A&M. When he came home for the summer, I was hoping he’d share with his old dad all the up-to-date and modern agricultural and animal-husbandry techniques he had acquired. He ain’t disposed to volunteer the information, though.”
Alafair had her own explanation of this behavior. “Oh, Shaw, no matter how old-fashioned he thinks your farming is, Gee Dub would never say anything to you, of all people, lest you think he’s judging you.”
“I expect you’re right, darlin’. Which is something of a poser, since I’d be entirely interested to hear about scientific farming.” Shaw shook his head. “Sometimes I have to pry the words out of that boy’s mouth with a crowbar!”
Chapter Ten
“Come On Boys, Do Your Duty: Enlist!”
—U.S. Army propaganda poster, 1917
Alafair had filled Rob’s arms with a pile of pillows and quilts so high that Gee Dub thought he’d have to lead his uncle to the toolshed like a blind man.
The night was brisk and cool, with a fresh gusty breeze that drove tattered clouds across the face of the moon. “Look, there’s a ring around the moon, sport.” Rob’s voice was muffled by a pillow. “I reckon it’ll rain before long.”
“Why are you so dead set against the war, Uncle Robin?”
They were halfway across the yard when Gee Dub a
sked his unexpected question. Rob stopped walking and eyed his nephew over the blankets.
Gee Dub continued. “Mama told us that you ran away to join the Army yourself when you were just about the same age as me. You must have wanted to.”
“Oh, I did. I was just like Charlie, all piss and vinegar. I was wild to charge right up San Juan Hill with old Teddy. I was just a little squirt, not big and well-grown like you, hotshot, but I found a recruiter in Little Rock who was looking to fill his quota for that month, and he signed me up. My daddy could have had me mustered out for being underage, but he said I had made my bed and I could lie in it. I figure he knew I’d just run off again, and besides, I’d have been old enough the next year, anyway. By the time I finished basic, the Cuban part of the Spanish War was over. They sent me to the Philippines. I spent the next six years of my life wrestling with malaria and foot rot, wading through swamps, picking leeches off myself, and trying not to get my head chopped off by some scrawny little stinker with a big machete.
“I never did know why we were there. The Filipinos were glad to get rid of the Spanish, but they never did cotton to trading one master for another, and wanted us out of there just as bad. Those Moro tribesmen were about as big as a minute, but they sure scared the liver out of me. We all knew that it was better to blow your own brains out with your service pistol than to let yourself get captured.”
“Sounds like the Apaches.” Gee Dub was a lover of Zane Grey novels.
Rob shrugged. “At least you maybe could see the Apaches coming across the desert and eat a bullet before they got you.”
“I think this is different, though, Uncle Robin. The Spanish weren’t after ruling the world, but the Germans are. And in the end I’m an American, and when my country calls, I’m going, all right.”
Rob broke eye contact and looked out over the dark expanse of Alafair’s garden. “You looking to kill some Huns, too?” His tone was neutral, but Rob wasn’t best pleased by the announcement.
“They’ll take me or I’ll go of my own accord like I’ve got a choice in the matter.” Gee Dub delivered this piece of information as a plain statement of fact. “I expect whatever we think about this war, we’re all going to have to get behind it. It’s win or die, now.”
